The precise second that NBA participant Dillon Brooks misplaced the mandate of heaven: After poking the bear of LeBron James within the 2023 playoffs, failing to reside as much as his personal slanderous trash-talk whereas his aggressive fashion of play floundered on the court docket, Brooks unceremoniously hit free company because the Memphis Grizzlies leaked that he wouldn’t be re-signed “below any circumstances.” Brooks’ story seems as an omen on “i scream this within the mirror earlier than i work together with anybody,” the opening monitor on JPEGMAFIA’s fifth studio album, I LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR YOU. Within the first strains, the 34-year-old Baltimore rapper—whose iconoclastic presence is cast on a confrontational mixture of noise, rap, and punk—likens himself to a worse model of Brooks as cymbals titter within the background. It’s an initiation to JPEG’s caustic humor laced with a smidge of unintentional knowledge: You may play the function of the tireless provocateur so long as you proceed to ship.
On I LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR YOU, JPEG entrenches himself within the agitator function. The follow-up to his 2023 Danny Brown collaboration Scaring the Hoes is blanketed in frenetic power, as if JPEG can’t resolve the place to intention first. At occasions his extraordinarily on-line subject material takes the bloom off his writing. However his innate potential to shift between breakneck flows amid chaotic manufacturing buoys the album.
In a 2023 interview, JPEG mentioned that he aspires to create music that “tears you out of your self.” On I LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR YOU, it feels as if he’s tearing in 30 instructions without delay, incorporating a dizzying mixture of genres seemingly at random. The imperfect marriage of a 2014 Future pattern and a persistent whirring sound on “New Black Historical past” registers as grating somewhat than electrifying; his chants and growls in “vulgar show of energy” are eroded by a blistering rock backdrop. At different factors his glitchy, staccato raps match seamlessly with the manufacturing’s entropy: on “it’s darkish and hell is sizzling,” a 170 bpm Brazilian funk manufacturing assisted by DJ RaMeMes, or over a staticky Jade pattern on “I’ll Be Proper There.” Because it did on his 2018 launch Veteran, JPEG’s potential to stroll the road between distortion and discord permits the economic chaos to really feel one way or the other acquainted—as if the one factor extra jarring can be unified sound course.
Regardless of the topic, JPEG’s raps by no means draw back from confrontation (he described the Drake disses on “New Black Historical past” and “it’s darkish and hell is sizzling” as “throwaway bars”). On I LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR YOU, he continues to hip hearth with an air of superiority: “Pretend-plug-talkin’ Tubi rappers/Obtained a machine behind ’em, and nonetheless they will’t refill capability with they raps,” he spits on “SIN MIEDO.” There’s room to take intention at white individuals who act Black and shit-talkers with their very own skeletons within the closet, all whereas retaining tempo with a enjoyable Denzel Curry look. His popular culture references are easy and high-powered: Calling himself the “Black Michael Phelps” is objectively humorous. The nonstop airing of grievances is entertaining, however finally it could actually really feel like JPEG’s off-the-cuff trolls are reaching vital mass. There’s wanton carelessness in utilizing “African booty scratcher” as an insult whereas additionally claiming that he scares individuals “that ain’t obtained no Black associates.” He’ll go and liken himself to the IDF on the five-minute opus “Exmilitary,” then title the following monitor “JIHAD JOE,” not bothering to regulate for the contradictions between his persona and political commentary.