“SCARING THE HOES” is a collab album from JPEGMAFIA and Danny Brown. Before this album, JPEGMAFIA, better known as Peggy, and Danny only had one song together so this album wasn’t exactly expected. However, when it was announced back in 2022, it immediately became my most anticipated album of that year, and when it didn’t get released that year, it became my most anticipated album of 2023. I built this album up so much in my mind that I was surely setting myself up for disappointment, but somehow this album met and exceeded my absurdly high expectations.
“SCARING THE HOES” has some of Peggy’s best beats ever and some of the funniest, most charismatic rapping from both rappers. Peggy produced the entire album on the SP-404 as a test to see what his production style would sound like if he was around in the 1990s and the production on this album still sounds like it’s from 10 years in the future, with some of the most forward-thinking and insane samples I’ve heard in recent years.
One of these insane samples comes on the fourth song of the album, “Garbage Pale Kids.” Typically, artists will sample actual parts of songs or sounds that are so minute they can be worked into a beat but Peggy opted to use a chant performed by children on a local Japanese commercial from the mid-80s. With good repetition, a heavy amount of bass, drums that sound like empty pots, pans and a reverb-soaked guitar on the chorus, this beat is one of the wildest on the album.
The tenth track, “God Loves You,” utilizes a gospel sample mixed with some sliding 808s to create one of the craziest yet simplest beats on this album. It’s so loud and over the top that you can’t help but smile. Over this beat, Danny, in the most nasal variation of his voice, raps about incredibly sexual acts entirely through references to the Bible. There isn’t one line from Danny that doesn’t directly mention a character from the Bible or allude to an event.
One of the last songs on the album, “Jack Harlow Combo Meal,” goes in a direction that I never thought this album would go in: Jazz rap. A quaint piano tune that sounds like it’s been ripped straight from a jazz club, mixed with sporadic drums and a subdued bassline, makes this one of the tamer beats on the album. At the very end of his verse, Danny has this incredible bar where he criticizes rap artists for allowing Jack Harlow to be as big as he is and profit as much as he has off of Black culture. He is also upset that Jack Harlow is the spokesperson for KFC, as Black people can’t even profit off an old racist stereotype. It’s an incredibly powerful bar that is a good representation of Danny’s political views.
“SCARING THE HOES” is an incredible album with mind-blowing production start to finish. There are incredibly weird beats on here that, in any hands besides Danny’s and Peggy’s, would be wasted, but because of their experience, they are able to float on every song. This is easily one of, if not the best rap albums of last year and worth a listen from anyone who even slightly cares about rap music.
