Logan Walters Talks Wu-Tang Design Remix Project

The internet has been buzzing about Logan Walters ever since he put his "Wu-Tang Design Remix Project" up on his blog last week. The project was inspired by his "need to have decent-quality album art for every album on my computer," and led to the Michigan graphic designer re-imagining 21 of the Wu's group and solo albums, in classic Blue Note records fashion.

"I'm also really into the idea of sets, like say the Penguin Great Ideas books, and wanted all the Wu-Tang covers to have a unified look and feel," Walters told the BoomBox. "I've always been a big fan of what Reid Miles accomplished as art director at Blue Note, and in a way I think there are some loose parallels between what jazz musicians stood for in the 50's and what certain hip hop artists stood for in the 90's -- so it just made sense to use that as a starting point."

When Walters posted the first 8 covers he expected a mild amount of feedback, but nothing like the overwhelmingly positive (well, it's hip hop) response he's received from the hip hop community.

"I had no idea it would get this much attention, and I'm really really grateful to everybody that linked to it on their blogs or twitters...When it moved past the design blogs and onto the hip hop ones...I knew I was on to something...That said, obviously some people are going to be really invested in the originals and see what I'm doing as a kind of sacrilege and to some extent I think that's totally valid. On the other hand, it's just a thing I'm doing for fun and nobody's making you change your art in iTunes or whatever. A small number of people just miss the point completely and say things like 'these covers don't represent the music!' which of course was never my intention. It's pastiche dudes! Chill!!"

Walters, who describes Lil Wayne's 'Tha Carter III' cover as "ridiculous and beautiful. If every new cover from now til the end of time was that f---ing cool, I don't think I would mind much," and lists The Roots' 'Things Fall Apart,' and "anything Stones Throw puts out" among his favorite rap album covers, now has has an audience much bigger than his iPod. With 9 covers posted and 12 more to go, we can't wait to see what Walters cooks up next for Ghost, The Chef and co. to marinate in.