Shawn’s first assignments as Rap-A-Lot’s art director included getting to grips with the latest developments in computer-aided digital design. “Rap-A-Lot had been outsourcing a great deal of the special effects, if you want to call them that,” says Shawn. “It was basically paste-up, you physically get the stuff and stick it. They were doing so many album covers and adverts that their bills were $20,000 to $40,000 a month in computer layout charges. So Lil J bought the Apple Macintosh Quadro 900, the best system that was available in Houston at that time. The software was astronomical, the scanners were astronomical, the printer was like $2,500 for a basic bubblejet. We had a couple of people in the art department, and we started pushing it and pushing it and seeing what we could do. We would spend hours and hours on that machine after work, trying to figure out Photoshop and figure out freehand.”
