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This past summer, Jay-Z and Kanye used a blurry, Jasper Johnsish flag as the cover for their single, "Otis."

But ASAP's cover is most reminiscent of the one Outkast used eleven years ago for the Stankonia album.

Originally an Outkast acolyte, the great Atlanta rapper Killer Mike used a black-and-white flag with skull-n-crossbone stars for his first independent album in 2006.

And for its sequel, two years later.

Also from Atlanta, also in 2008, Young Jeezy draped himself in a flag on the cover of his album, The Recession, which featured the celebratory single, "My President." ("My President" featured a guest appearance from Nas, who had posed in front of the stars-and-stripes for the cover of XXL magazine earlier that year.)

Ice Cube's usage of the flag was less reverent back in 1991. There was a recession at that time, too. But George H. W. Bush was in office, and the album included the song, "I Wanna Kill Sam."

The late Bay Area legend Mac Dre spoofed Bush's predecessor on the excellent cover to his 2004 album, Ronald Dregan. A single from album, "Dreganomics," espouses living life, "royal, spoiled, the American way."

Ten years earlier, in 1994, fellow Bay Area rapper Spice 1 had taken a more Ice-Cube like approach.

In 1998, the Geto Boys depicted a young person smoking crack in front of the White House, with Uncle Sam looking on and the stars-n-stripes adorning the album title.

That same year, New Orleans' Full Blooded, a "soldier" in Master P's No Limit Records "army," wore fatigues and dug up Arlington Cemetery with his hands on the cover of his Memorial Day album. (God, those Pen & Pixel No Limit covers were always so amazing.)

In '99, elsewhere in New Orleans, a teenage Lil Wayne wore patriotic underpants on the cover of his first solo album.

Master P himself used the flag to reference the famous "Say hello to the bad guy" scene from Scarface in 2006.

Tray Deee, of Snoop Dogg's East Sidaz, posed like Patton in 2002.

And of course, Harlem's Dip Set similarly saluted the following year. (Maybe that's really where ASAP took his inspiration from.)

Lately, in general, American flag imagery on rap album covers has been less overtly political than it used to be.

Seems like a million years since 1990. Uncle Luke placed fourth, with 11 percent of the vote, in this year's Miami-Dade County mayoral race.

And of course, even longer since 1976, when the late, great Gil Scott-Heron, who's as worthy of the title of the original rapper as anyone, set the tone in this regard, as well.

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Of course, sunglasses go with music stardom like cocaine goes with more cocaine. There are lots of famous songs about the subject. Some of them are great. Thusly, there have been many album covers similar to Cee-Lo's.

I'm guessing people will first compare it to the image from Rick Ross's recent Teflon Don album.



But I think the reference is most directly to Bobby Womack.



But it's also like Stevie Wonder.



And Lou Reed, too.

And, as unfortunate as this is to remember, Lenny Kravtiz.

And Syl Johnson.

And O.V. Wright.

And in some ways most of all, though it isn't an album cover, Ethan Russell's famous picture of Keith Richards.

Here's Cee-Lo again, full-size:

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As he explained to hip-hop photography magazine Respect:

I went and told them, "Get me as close as you can to a lion." He had a trainer holding him on a chain. They took the chain out [in post-work]. It really went down. I wanted to pet him. I said, "Let me get hands on." They were like, "No. We could only let you do but so much." So I did as much as they would allow me to do... I wanted it to be a a busy city street. My original idea was to lock down Times Square and let me and the lion do the same thing right there, but we couldn't quite pull that off; they said it had to be in controlled environment. They tried to do a artsy kind of drawing. It looked good, but it didn't serve my purpose-it was just a painting. I figured, if it got to be a controlled environment, we may as well just keep it all the way simple make it black and white, white background, me, him, cool chair.

And here's a video trailer for the album that features more of the lion and a suitably exciting song snippet:

It should be an exciting time for album covers, now that they don't matter! People can literally do anything.

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