By the time most people heard “Make Me Over” on Out The Box, its chorus was already ghosting through Oak Park 92105's background vocals. The project was already in the ears of Nureau's dedicated fanbase. In 2003, burned CD-Rs and whispered links carried this double album through the Nureau Underground, leading up to its eventual 2005 and early 2006 iTunes drops.

Oak Park was the unofficial sequel to the original 1997 version of PTN, much in the same way Dr. Dre’s 2001 was an extension of The Chronic. Same protagonist, same city, but older eyes and heavier truth. Our job was to give that evolution a face and more centralized neighborhood to live in.

At it's core, the process wasn’t a glossy label rollout; it was guerilla filmmaking with key stills. I handled the photography and booklet design, building layouts in an early-2000's Adobe Creative Suite while the artist unpacked stories track by track. The booklet became a map of memories: fresh shots layered with childhood photos, present-tense struggle collaged with family history.

We would literally cruise through the Oak Park community with no shot list, just intuition. If a corner, field, or storefront hit a nerve, we pulled over. Santa Margarita. Chollas Parkway. The field. The childhood home. The Tradewinds liquor store. Each stop was less about scenery and more about life's revelations - visual footnotes to lyrics that were already pushing Christian music into uncomfortable honesty. Due to some of the more mature themes at the time, it became the first Gospel album to carry the "Parental Advisory" sticker.

Those 2005–2006 covers and inserts weren’t just packaging. They were proof that a PK from Southeast San Diego could treat his own zip code like sacred text, using visual storytelling to turn an entire neighborhood into liner notes.

2.0

#Nureau #InksetForever