Do 2007 Album Covers Reveal How Musicians Feel About Illegal Downloading? Round One: 50 vs. Kanye

We wondered. We thought about it a bit. See, we spend a lot of time on the Internet, or at least thinking about stuff we came across while spending time on the Internet. We go here, and here, and here, and here as well. We drop in here, and there, and over there, and sometimes hit this spot as well; not to mention this site, this other one, and a couple others, like this and this and this (if not as much as we probably should). Voguing to Danzig is down, yo. We're all over the place. We come across a lot of album cover artwork. So we engaged in some baseless speculation, and here's what we came up with:

1. 50 Cent, Curtis: As his recent glossy magazine cover photos make plain, Fitty's peeved about illegal downloading, which threatens his bourgeoning military-industrial-corporate-pop empire - though one could be forgiven for interpreting his scrunched-up mugging as a manifestation of extremely painful constipation. On previous album covers, Fitty exploited the drive-by that helped propel him to fame and left him with a number of bullet wounds, rocking an uber-gangsta's musclebound, idealized invincibility. The Curtis cover suggests that former drug-hustler Jackson is presently old, grumpy, wisely concerned that Best Buy shoppers find his schtick tired and his business mongering distasteful, and is preparing to sit the purchaser down for a serious - possibly harsh - discussion about file-sharing and responsibily and RIAA cease-and-desist letters/lawsuits that he doesn't wanna have to bother with right now, as there's a running Lear stocked with Vitamin Water and lube-dripping King models, waiting to fly him to the Bahamas.

2. Kanye West, Graduation: Kanye's recent courting of hipsters via the appropriation of Daft Punk, Thom Yorke, and Peter Bjorn and John songs indicates that dude's fairly familiar with where his bread's buttered - and figures that everyone else who buys his records is cool enough with his relative hip-hop weirdness/outsider-persona/progressivity to keep on keepin' on. So the cover's total I'ma-do-my-thing-cuz-I'm-Kanye: manga manga manga, with shades of Dragon Ball Z and Pokemon and whatever Japanese animation meme is trendy with geeks these days. Translation: "La de dah!" Kanye West ain't sweatin' Limewire hustlers because plenty of folks believe in what he's about and will hold him down.

Fitty and Kanye are releasing these records on the same day - Tuesday, September 11, 2007. I'm fairly certain I know which CD I'm buying; are you?