Railing of Akon - trouble Album cover

Akon - Trouble

This is Akon’s album cover which he released for his CD called Trouble. The theme of the songs in the CD is about creating trouble therefore he chose to name it Trouble, also he got his name written in a scratched font which looks similar to wall scratching’s that prisoners do in order to write on the walls this shows has a criminalistics approach, but is in the colour white which represents good pure hearted therefore it’s a juxtaposition o show that he is good but might be in some kind of trouble. Also the red background connotes danger, power which is in contrast with the title Trouble. The picture is of Akon in a passive position; this is due to him not doing anything by not engaging with the audience. He looks like he is meditating this is due to him being passive, also he is shown with topless to show off his muscles, this connotes strength and Akon being in control. These enforce the dominant values of men being strong and in control of the situation. According to Barthes this creates an enigma code due to the audience not actually knowing what Akon is doing. The album will potentially attract the female audience more than the male audience, this is due to Akon being topless on the cover of the album which will attract women with his physique but also the male audience because they want to be like him and have a toned body which will attract women. The parental advisory sticker is issued to be on this album cover to restrict the younger audience from listening to the songs because the lyrics may have profane language and drug or sexual reference in them, this also is linked to the title of the album cover which states trouble, and when people are in trouble they usually have done something wrong which has a bad influence on the younger audience because the government doesn’t want the children or tomorrow to grow around drugs, sexual content and overall trouble itself. Therefore they try prevent this by adding a parental advisory sticker so that parents can restrict children from listening to the songs, this enforces the hyper dermic syringe theory which in this case states that if younger audiences listen to the lyrics which includes drug and sex references, they will think that its ok to do it so they will go and do because their favourite musician said in one of their songs that they do it.