JPEGMAFIA appears inward on ‘I LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR YOU’ : NPR

JPEGMAFIA performs in 2023 at The Rooftop at Pier 17 in New York Metropolis.

Keeyahtay Lewis on behalf of The Rooftop at Pier 17

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Keeyahtay Lewis on behalf of The Rooftop at Pier 17

In January, the rapper and producer JPEGMAFIA ignited some pissed off chatter on-line when a photograph of him and Kanye West, hinting at a collaboration, appeared on his Instagram. JPEG had lengthy been vocal about how a lot he revered Kanye, and the function that the G.O.O.D. Music architect had performed in his musical training. However given the widespread dismay at his hero’s anti-semitic antics (“Kanye’s a Nazi now,” JPEG himself lamented in an interview simply final 12 months), the backlash was predictable and quick. The artist fired again, justifying his participation in what would turn into Vultures 1, Ye’s first tag-team album with Ty Dolla $ign, as apolitical: a long-awaited name as much as the majors by his favourite rapper ever, their connection nothing greater than a fated bucket listing second. “its offensive to me that some folks on right here took a second i had been ready on my entire life and twisted into some bizarre ass oppression olympics,” he wrote in an Instagram story. “I make objectives and that i obtain them. you make imply reddit threads. We are going to by no means be alike irrespective of how a lot u need it’s.”

It needs to be no shock, then, that JPEG’s personal new solo album makes use of the slight as gas. “After they can’t learn you want a e book / They gon’ attempt to assault what you stand on,” he raps a couple of minutes into I LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR YOU (launched Aug. 2), earlier than resetting his phrases: “I’ma take off even when I land mistaken / And take all the things I can get my arms on.” Afterward, he sounds practically giddy poking enjoyable on the on-line firestorm, rapping “The lies don’t stick, narratives ain’t fittin’ / Now they gotta pivot, the goalpost shifts” close to the tip of “Exmilitary,” a tune that fires from the hip in all instructions — at household, at exes, at bros with no Black associates, at nepo infants, at opps who transfer an excessive amount of like “Harvey, Jeffrey, R. Kelly,” the unholy trinity of movie star intercourse offenders. Rather than what he deems faux information about his character, he presents a rousing, dogmatic set of songs hell bent on not simply name-clearing however identity-protecting, over manufacturing that erupts with the frenzy of hardcore punk. And but, beneath the mayhem, there may be additionally a little bit of second-guessing, a startling improvement for certainly one of hip-hop’s most relentless clever guys.

A collage artist working someplace between noise rap and sound design, JPEGMAFIA has for years stood on the forefront of an edgy cohort of hip-hop doomscrollers tapped into the tradition wars. He emerged as a Bandcamp success story in 2018 along with his second album, Veteran, which was refreshing for all of its glitchy dissonance, channeling the harshness of Throbbing Gristle, the off-balance hardcore nerddom of MF DOOM and the madcap mania of Ol’ Soiled Bastard for pointedly unresolved songs about gentrification in Williamsburg, hipsters infiltrating rap tradition and the bounds of liberalism. Subsequent albums elevated the muchness of his sound by a number of levels: 2019’s All My Heroes Are Cornballs was tectonic in construction, continuously shifting and embracing melody with a proudly nonsensical execution, whereas establishing the open dialogue along with his viewers that will linger all through his rise. “Younger Peggy, I am a false prophet / Bringin’ white people this new faith / My followers want new addictions,” he declared. “Rap been so good to me, I hope it get me canceled.” 2021’s LP!, launched in on-line and offline variations for pattern clearance causes, swung towards a clipping, synthy avant-garde sound and an intense preoccupation with beef. All alongside, he has matched trolling with trolling, making a confrontational relationship along with his public. Many see him as terminally on-line and generally paradoxical; he sees those that @ him as consultant of a widespread scourge he should rail towards, as soon as calling himself a villain to basement dwellers. He has by no means been shy about his personal historical past, as a Black Southern transplant and Air Power veteran turned rap beatmaker by means of sheer overexposure to the web. However after 4 albums of kick-in-your-teeth rap making memes out of politicos and sycophants, ILDMLFY is his first to level towards one thing past snark and fury: an untangling of his contradictions, weighing on-line discourse’s concept of who he’s towards who he is aware of himself to be.

That begins, apparently, with setting the report straight. Seemingly answering for one thing at each second, JPEG targets his trolls right here as if taking over arms to defend his honor. These raps are a few of his most biting and snappy; he sounds amped up delivering them, at instances agitated however by no means inconvenienced, and possibly even taking a bit pleasure in what he clearly sees as punching down. “Hating without spending a dime however you may’t pay your lease / For those who’re gonna d***-ride, make it make cents,” he raps on “it’s darkish and hell is sizzling.” Numerous rap is preoccupied with hate — resentment and envy, particularly — however JPEG has a means of approximating the snowballing whataboutism of the social internet, making it seem to be he’s penetrating its surreal, suffocating clutch even because the echo chamber bears down on him. On “New Black Historical past,” he raps, “Y’all want I saved on eatin’ jail lunch ‘trigger I’m tweetin’ an excessive amount of,” sounding emboldened to maintain posting round a shadow-ban. It isn’t simply that he sees his personal continued success as a panacea; for him, his music stands as the one actual and true factor about him on-line, a solution for these trying to puzzle him out.

He has spent plenty of his catalog sniping at rap rivals, waving off burner-account critiques and selecting precise fights (“All of my songs a diss,” he admitted on 2021’s “Nemo”), and this album is as outlined by bird-flipping vitriol as every other. However the thrashing power discovered at its begin dissipates because it goes on, revealing a self-conscious thoughts, if not apologetic then not less than troubled. “I can’t defend this b**** up within the mirror / I’d slightly ask forgiveness than permission,” he raps on “Don’t Put Something on the Bible.” Afterward, he provides, “My b**** by no means received taken from me, I misplaced her myself / My b**** by no means received consolation from me, I wanted an excessive amount of assist.” He doesn’t appear a lot inquisitive about that assist now, and it might be imprecise to say he expresses something like contrition. However he’s drawn right into a brooding house — fascinated by substance abuse and sobriety, his relationship to class, his army background and the music machine, assessing the injury attributable to his disposition inside his very area of interest, very on-line sphere of affect.

This self-assessment — a tenacious agitator questioning how these urges have an effect on how he operates, and have an effect on these round him — is guided by dynamic, detailed manufacturing that may be as beautiful as it’s face-melting. Lots of the beats divulge heart’s contents to reveal a second beat inside them, as if experiencing a zoological metamorphosis. They swing each methods: from quiet to busy, or from intense to subdued. Typically they go from loud to louder. “JIHAD JOE” explodes from breakbeat bliss right into a ripping metallic mash. After a celestial overture from Buzzy Lee on “Don’t Put Something on the Bible,” a swap flips from saintly splendor to extra grounded guitar riffs. The collagist’s instincts are nonetheless in overdrive right here, piecing collectively all the things from Logan Roy sound bites to NBA footage, flipping ‘70s Japanese jazz and modern baile funk, repurposing basic soul drums from Sly & the Household Stone. But it surely all is completed with such a gentle hand as to really feel not identical to a densely sampled, openly engineered world in miniature, which is true of each LP! and the Danny Brown collab Scaring the Hoes, however prefer it has turned the sum of its oddball components into the material of a unified aesthetic. He goes about issues a lot in a different way, however in impact, he begins to take after the previous Kanye, making maximalism really feel built-in and harmonious.

Talking of which, the space at this second between JPEGMAFIA and Kanye West couldn’t be any extra obvious after the Saturday launch of Ye’s second album with Ty Dolla $ign, Vultures 2, one other kitchen-sink effort showcasing the worst impulses of a capricious egomaniac. Kanye is on the different finish of the firestarter life cycle, and his music is more and more about provocation with out finish. You possibly can hear in his current songs an try to channel the ambition and intention of his basic, transformative run, however behaviorally, he’s turn into a broken nerve ending, unable to relay exterior stimuli to the hive-mind entity he inhabits — which itself has come to really feel much less like a cohort of specialists underneath the orchestration of an Oppenheimer-like maestro, and extra like a cult dedicated to a ringleader’s suicide pact. Shortly earlier than JPEG received the decision to work on Vultures 1, he had publicly voiced his exasperation on the state of the Kanye machine — “U received 27 n****s tweaking hello hats simply to make some mid,” he wrote on X — and hinted at himself because the caliber of beatmaker whose tinkering would possibly truly do some good. Ultimately, his contributions had been amongst that album’s most distinct and totally realized. And listening to each artists’ new data facet by facet, the distinction of their present strategies feels overwhelmingly clear.

There’s, in spite of everything, a purposefulness lacking from Ye’s stunts. His persistent tardiness (each Vultures albums adopted weeks of unclear teases and blew their launch dates by a day) reads because the signal of an artist who doesn’t know when to cease, and that infinite tampering appears to largely serve a imaginative and prescient of his personal genius. He can really feel, at instances, like a trespasser in his personal management room, actively sabotaging songs. Like his new producing companion, he’s motivated above all by exterior hate and perceived snubs (“You tried to convey me to my lowest, I nonetheless introduced the imaginative and prescient / I see by the blinds,” he raps on Vultures 2’s “Time Transferring Sluggish”), however that admonishment not focuses him, because it as soon as did on the career-resetting My Lovely Darkish Twisted Fantasy. JPEG favors Ye in some ways, good and dangerous, however I hear within the youthful artist’s newest work not solely a flowering grasp craftsmanship, however a willingness to confront the thought of what his music is for.

Once I interviewed JPEG a number of years in the past within the lead-up to All My Heroes Are Cornballs, he cited Kanye because the thesis of the title’s message — that listeners shouldn’t put their religion in artists, just because they have no idea them. But even then he wouldn’t decide his idol, already deep within the palm of Trumpism, as a result of he believed anybody, himself included, might find yourself there. I’ve considered that stance loads whereas listening to those albums. JPEG might very nicely find yourself identical to Kanye sooner or later, however the foresight in that remark suggests, to me, an artist looking for consciousness slightly than religion. That’s what I learn in his album’s supplicating title, I LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR YOU — a recognition, even between barbs, that provocation is usually merely a canopy for a determined want to be seen and understood.