Ever heard of Interscope Records? I hadn’t until recently when a good friend and fellow collector tipped me off about a new Damien Hirst cover that was to be released by Interscope Records as part of their thirtieth anniversary celebration.

It turns out that the company released Eminem‘s first album The Slim Shady in 1999 and that they are releasing limited edition albums of the Eminem catalogue with new cover art by Damien Hirst. Five of the redesigned albums are picture discs in new Hirst designed covers produced in limited editions of 500, while a further seven are available on black vinyl, in signed editions of 100 that include a giclée print of the cover art packaged in Gucci-designed wrapping. Each picture disc version costs USD 100, and the signed editions cost USD 2,500 each. Damien Hirst has done these reimagined covers for free as the proceeds are going to charity. Despite the fact that the proceeds from the sale of these art covers are going to charity I feel that they are wildly overpriced. The picture discs are each produced in editions of 500 copies and USD 100 strikes me as too expensive. I think a more reasonable price would be around USD 50. I would expect a record priced at USD 2,500, like the black vinyl albums to be in much more limited editions, perhaps even unique items in order to motivate the price. These are probably aimed at galleries or institutions rather than individual collectors and the exorbitant price prevents serious collectos of the individual artists’ covers from buying them.

In addition to these new Damien Hirst covers there is a redesigned Snoop Doggy Dogg Doggy Style LP cover by KAWS for USD 100 in an edition of 500 copies that sold out almost immediately it was released. However, there was only one further release that I was interested in, and that is Richard Prince‘s reinterpretation of Nine Inch Nails‘ The Downward Spiral LP.

In addition to the Damien Hirst designed covers for the Eminem albums, Interscope have released twenty-one other albums with redesigned covers priced at USD 2,000-2,500 by artists such as Gwen Stefani, Lana del Rey, Helmet, Dr. Dre, Billy Eilish and others.

These are the black vinyl Damien Hirst albums:

I actually really like these Damien Hirst covers! Obviously I can’t afford the USD2,500 limited editions and so I can never own a complete set of the artist’s record cover art.

I have ordered the five Hirst and the RIchard Prince picture disc editions. Perhaps I’ll make my own versions of the USD2,500 editions later to complete my collection.

All these covers can be bought through the Interscope Records site or via NTWRK app, subject to availability.