37. The Roots, Things Fall Apart
There were five covers for this legendary album cover for Things Fall Apart and each one was more iconic than the next — and all starkly worthy of gracing the list.
One was of Mob boss Giuseppe “Joe the Boss” Masseria who was holding an ace card in his hand after he was murdered by Benjamin “Bugsy” Sigel, Vito Genovese, Albert Anastasia, and Joe Adonis at the Nuova Villa Tammaro in Coney Island restaurant in 1931. Another cover was of a child stranded in the rubble at Shanghai’s South Railway Station in 1937 after the Japanese attacked the Chinese during the wartime conflict. The album cover that is the most recent was shot in 1992 and features a Somalian child crying because it is hungry — due to a country-wide famine exacerbated by civil war. Just as heart-wrenching is the cover that features a church bombing. While that image is horrific, what makes it more intriguing is that the date, location, and who shot it remains unknown by the group.
The cover that is most popular features a young teen girl running in Bed-Stuy from the police during the 1960s race riots during the fight for civil rights for Black people. It is befitting to see images from 2020’s summer that could easily be swapped with this one.