It’s a simple cover—a white backdrop behind a black and white photo of the ultimate universal symbol of human innocence, vulnerability and new life: a baby. He sits at the center of the cover, doe-eyed and cross-legged, sporting nothing but a diaper, a pensive stare and a miraculous fro for someone who likely weighs no more than 20 pounds. In jarring contrast to his youth, he hovers above the album’s title: Ready To Die.

Until now, this cover hasn’t been featured on an official vinyl edition of Ready To Die since the album’s release in 1994. Since then—both for the cover’s visual power alone and the overall impact of the album—it’s become one of the most recognizable album covers of all time.

The design alludes to the most condensed version of the lifecycle possible, the guaranteed bookends. But at the time Notorious B.I.G. recorded the introspective bangers on Ready To Die, it was the version he was facing. On one hand, he was facing the possibility, reality and inevitability of death and chronicling it into an album, and on the other he had a baby girl at home to feed. Once you slide the record out of its sleeve and put it on, the first thing you’re confronted with is an autobiographical timeline reduced to 3 minutes and 24 seconds, naturally starting birth.

Ready To Die wasn’t the first cover to take advantage of impactful infant imagery, and it certainly wasn’t the last. Released 6 months after Nas’ Illmatic, which features a baby Nas on the front, Biggie’s cover even spurred controversy claiming the cover was a Nas rip-off. Ghostface and Nas even took digs at Biggie on Raekwon’s “Shark Niggas (Biters)” and “Last Real Nigga Alive:” “Bad Boy biting Nas album cover.” And whether by direct reference, influence or coincidence, the list of monumental albums with little ones on the front after 1994 is massive; everyone from Drake to Nirvana to Lil Wayne to the Cranberries.