JPEGMAFIA Vinyl & CDs

Review: American rapper JPEGMAFIA's latest is a sprawl-furious, funny and brutally confessional. It plays like a barrage of psychic snapshots: voice notes, demos, diss tracks, gospel flips and pixelated trap dreams. The first half (ending with 'ALLAH') forms a pummelling, meticulously sequenced core-'Jordan Rules' and 'JPEGULTRA!' crackle with fury, while 'i lay down my life for you' and 'Don't Put Anything on the Bible' show his growing mastery of melody and space. Vince Staples, Denzel Curry and Buzzy Lee slide into the chaos without diluting it. The second half loosens its grip: raw sketches like 'tour idea feb 1st 2025' and 'JIHAD JOE' stretch the project's limbs outward. It's unfiltered but not aimless-his vision is lucid even at its most erratic. From the title down to the tracklist, this is a record that dares you to look away and dares him to reveal more. It's the most complete JPEGMAFIA has ever sounded-uncompromising, contradictory, and fully locked into his own frequency. A closing chapter that reads like a manifesto.

Review: JPEGMAFIA's All My Heroes Are Cornballs is a departure from his earlier work, showcasing a sprawling collage of influences and pop culture totems. While his past projects sometimes obscured this scope with adrenalized politics, this album lays bare the breadth of his creative influences. Adopting gendered terms and staging songs from diverse perspectives, JPEG fearlessly explores identity and expression. As a producer, he creates hyper-syncretic songs that blend disparate sounds seamlessly, turning friction into motion. Sequences blossom fully, with tracks like 'Kenan Vs. Kel' effortlessly shifting through keyboard melodies and crunchy power chords. 'Grimy Waifu' exemplifies this approach, blending gun ode lyrics with gorgeous instrumentation. All My Heroes Are Cornballs is a trippy, earnest journey into JPEG's interdimensional mind showing his fearlessness and creativity.

Review: JPEGMAFIA's Veteran is a confrontational and glitchy masterpiece, both musically and politically charged. Drawing inspiration from Ol' Dirty Bastard's experimentalism, the album delves into themes of racism, gentrification, and internet culture with unapologetic fervor. Entirely self-produced, the album showcases JPEGMAFIA's adept ability to use of sound and texture, weaving together frayed elements into a cohesive and atmospheric whole. Tracks like 'Baby I'm Bleeding' and 'Panic Emoji' exemplify the album's sonic chaos, with distortion and fragmentation used percussively and melodically. JPEGMAFIA's delivery is equally dynamic, seamlessly transitioning between singing and rapping, often on the same track. His lyrical prowess shines on 'Williamsburg,' where he paints a vivid portrait of gentrification's cold and industrial reality. JPEGMAFIA's music remains firmly rooted in his unique perspective, making Veteran a breathless and essential addition to the hip-hop landscape.

Review: LP! marked the fourth studio album by esteemed Baltimore rapper JPEGMAFIA. Dropping back in October 2021 and coinciding with his 32nd birthday, the record boasts collaborations with DatPiMaa, Kimbra, and Tkay Maidza and picked up plenty of acclaim from Pitchfork, NME, and others. Lyrically, it delves into JPEG's struggles within the music industry while maintaining his own sense of authenticity. Fully self-produced, it epitomizes his artistic ethos and comes after he has amassed over 1.5 million monthly Spotify listeners and a 500K+ strong Instagram following. As such with this album, JPEGMAFIA has solidified his status as a leading figure in contemporary and experimental hip hop.

Review: Alternative hip-hop wunderkind JPEGMAFIA unveiled Ghost Pop Tape in 2023 under his current moniker, and made it widely available to streaming platforms, yet the 23-track mixtape was originally released a full decade prior in 2013 under the prolific MC/producer's birth name of Devon Hendryx. Featuring a less focused, lo-fi, alt-r&b vibe compared to the more animated, frenetic and dynamic modern persona of Peggy, the tape finally comes home to wax for all of those uber-fan completionists utterly bothered by the project's absence from their shelves...until now!

Review: Scaring The Hoes was the 2023 collaborative record by unequivocal avant-hip-hop crown bearers Danny Brown and JPEGMAFIA. The album was almost instantly met with widespread critical acclaim, most notably for its weird use of contemporary political imagery in music videos (frequently Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un, for some reason) and its staunch defiance of the misogynistic injunction to "stop scaring the hoes" with weird, left-of-centre music. Now comes the 'DLC' and/or 'expansion pack' version of the album, which includes four exclusive new mixes from the album sessions; Brown shines on an ultra-kooky, SFX-laden intro, 'Guess What Bitch, We Back Hoe!', followed by the crackly soul-bap of 'Hermanos' and the crossticking lo-fi of 'Tell Me Where To Go'. Closer 'No! No! No!' presents an incredible gospel timestretch-spaghettification, over which a medley shared between both MCs makes their enduring talents ever more apparent.