Bleep

Switching from plunderphonic, vaporwave-esque blurs to lasering beat artillery at a moment’s notice, JPEGMAFIA’s second album Veteran solidified his style and effectively put the iconoclastic Baltimore rapper and producer on the map. Originally released on Deathbomb Arc in 2018, who have hosted similar hip hop innovators like clipping. and They Hate Change as well as genre deconstructors like Lolina, the album’s abrasive attitude was hard to ignore, catching immediate attention with its full throttle maximalism and slyly referential, unrelenting lyrics.

Beginning a blisteringly hot three album run with All My Heroes Are Cornballs and LP! quick to follow, Peggy was a fresh new face from the ever fruitful American underground, completely forgoing the established rules of hip hop. Rather than construct the perfect classic beat loop and flow, he makes music that just simply doesn’t want to sit still. It’s a sensory overload ethos that can only be formed through the internet, where a hypercharged array of microgenres can be accessed with a single click, infused with memetic subcultural artefacts and playfully alchemical sonic manipulations.

Tracks like ‘Thug Tears’ exemplify Peggy’s sample based excess, pulling U turns from melodic trap into abstract electronica with overblown bass, driving into impressionistic rhythms and guttural glitching growls further down the tracklist. It’s microcosmic of the album on the whole: lofi underwater soundscapes and coarse whistling noise are juxtaposed by gauzy dream pop leaning guitars and chunky downtempo drums, and no one so much as bats an eye. Yet in between the attacking tactile beats lie moments of introspection and clarity such as ‘Panic Emoji’, its viscerally personal lyrics submerged in a downpour of raw rhythms, bass, and watery atmospherics.

JPEGMAFIA may very well have opened a door to a new vision of hip hop on Veteran, unconcerned with trying to conform to any previous visions at all.