JPEGMAFIA (a.k.a. Peggy) had an incredibly eventful 2023 with the release of his collab album with Danny Brown and the rerelease of his 2013 album, “The Ghost~Pop Tape.” He had shared plans to release a third album last year but sadly he wasn’t able to finish it in time. Eight months later, that album is here and it’s just as electric as his past releases.
The album’s opener, “i scream this in the mirror before i interact with anyone,” sets the tone for the rest of the album with quiet cymbals that get disrupted by a blaring electric guitar. The second half of the song features a sample of a Fortnite emote that for almost any other artist would be a bit of a ridiculous decision, but it fits right at home with Peggy’s style.
The next track, “SIN MIEDO,” is one of the best on the album on account of it feeling like three songs in one. During the first part, Peggy raps over a 2 LIVE CREW sample that isn’t arranged in any sensical way. The second part combines that sample with insanely hard synth hits and a deafening electric guitar until it crescendos into some intricate riffs before switching one more time into a more breakcore-style beat. Peggy’s rapping on this track and the album as a whole isn’t too stylistically different from his past work, and while he does give some genuinely fantastic performances on this album, he left me wanting a little bit more in the lyricism and flow departments.
Denzel Curry makes an appearance on the song “JPEGULTRA!” and delivers one of the best verses on the album. Peggy’s verse isn’t anything to sleep on though as it has one of my favorite lines on the album where he says “JPEGMAFIA, making grown men emotional since 2008 at least.” The beat consists of loud, in-your-face horns and some well-assembled drums that completely switch up into a much more lowkey, acoustic guitar-centric beat in the second half.
The song “either on or off the drugs” is undoubtedly beautiful but I’ve wrestled with my admiration for this song for a bit because the incredibly prominent sample is from an A.I. “song.” I am strongly against the use of generative A.I. in any form of art but before I found out the source of the sample I thought this was hands-down the best song on the album. I see almost no artistic merit in this song now outside of the writing and original guitar parts at the end and can’t help but feel this song would be way better had Peggy just recreated the sample by singing it himself.
“I LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR YOU” is another fantastic addition to Peggy’s already unbelievable discography and makes me incredibly excited for the future, as he never seems to stop growing and expanding as a musician.
