JPEGMafia publicly asked Pitchfork to stop covering him last year. Then he released a 25-track album and waited for them to review it. They gave it a 55. He probably expected that.
This is the thing about Peggy, though, that makes him compelling and, six albums in, occasionally wearing: the provocation and the music are now so tightly wound together that it’s difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins.
Experimental Rap is written, recorded, produced and mixed entirely by Peggy himself i total creative control, no outside interference. At 25 tracks it’s his longest solo record and his most uneven. The opening singles established the range: ‘babygirl’ collides punk, rap and electronic noise around a Charlie Kirk lyric that manages to be politically furious and genuinely funny in the same breath; ‘¥ (Yen)’ is fractured industrial glitch-hop about wealth and paranoia that hits hard and moves fast; ‘War Over Land’ is the most serious thing here, cinematic and heavy, about conflict and the hollowness of clout-chasing, and the one track that suggests Peggy is still interested in something beyond performing himself.
There really is nobody else making music that sounds quite like this – noisy, jagged, sample-drunk, abrasive, with enough swagger and personality to stop it tipping into pure noise.
The problem is what comes after those three. At 25 tracks the album’s intensity becomes its own enemy. Several mid-album tracks like ‘Meet the Dealers’, ‘GYBB’, ‘Mask On’ generate almost no critical or listener discussion, which means they’re functioning as texture rather than songs. The rollout, the title, the anti-press stance – these are the moves of an artist who has started to perform the version of himself his audience expects rather than the one that surprised everyone on All My Heroes Are Cornballs. That album made his creative restlessness feel genuinely unpredictable. This one makes it feel like a brand.
I still find it more interesting than most things released this month, which might be the most honest thing I can say about it. The best 12 tracks here would make an excellent record. The 25-track version asks more of you than it always earns. Peggy knows this. He released it anyway.
