#did you know that this is the second remix 8 to be speedy?

[puppys-rhythm-heaven]

the rhythm heaven wiki gives me extremely useless rhythm heaven knowledge that i have literally no use for but that is ingrained in my mind anyways.

[soaptunes]

Soap’s 2020 AOTY Reviews: JPEGMAFIA - EP!

This EP (!) is really just a collection of all the loose singles Peggy dropped on a roughly monthly basis over the course of 2020. Despite that, and maybe even because of it, it’s still a contender for best rap project of the year.

I feel like I’m getting tired of saying that JPEGMAFIA is one of the most creative artists making experimental hip-hop right now. Even more tired of that appellation is Peggy himself, who on one track here proudly shouts out, “Fuck the underground, I’m going pop.” Of course, on the same song (the raucous, clattering “COVERED IN MONEY!”) he claims he beats his dick when he looks in the mirror and compares his gun to Portia La Rossi’s strap-on, so. Take that as you will. 

It’s strange that Peggy’s 2019 album All My Heroes Are Cornballs is over a year old now. That isn’t that long ago, but a lifetime has happened since then, and the thing still sounds more immediate than most projects that dropped this year. The same is true of 2018’s Veteran, but both projects have some songs that fall short. I won’t get specific, this isn’t a review of those albums, but a few tracks on both are experiments that don’t pan out - they get lost in the weeds of harshness and strange samples, they lack strong hooks or funny bars, they follow an obscure groove that’s hard to get a handle on. EP! proves that cut down to its essential moments, a JPEGMAFIA record can be a 25-minute blast. 

This is only 8 songs, we can take it track-by-track, which I think we’ll be doing for any EP reviews I do on here.

The first song is “BALD!,” a song that dropped in February, just before the pandemic turned this singles series into a quarantine project. If your first thought is that the beat sounds like something out of an obscure Nintendo racing game, that’s because it is - the main sample here is from Ridge Racer 3D for the 3DS. In pretty much every picture of JPEGMAFIA you can find from before this song’s release, he’s wearing a bandana or sweatband or something around his forehead, but this song literally served as the announcement to his fanbase that he’d shaved his head. This is a fucking hilarious concept for a song to begin with, but the beat is genuinely pretty and Peggy’s flow is merciless. Knocking the breakbeats out from under the synths makes them wash out and sound like the audio equivalent of a shitty screensaver, which I mean in the best way possible. 

BEST BAR: “Hairline proof God needs balance, BALD.”

“COVERED IN MONEY!” is a serious contender for song of the year for me. I would absolutely love to watch this guy figure out a beat, because the instrumental on this goes unbelievably hard and simultaneously makes no sense at all. It’s squeaky, stomping, clattering, shambolic, and feels like it’s completely falling apart. Does a beat like this come together in his head first? The drum pattern is borderline nonsensical, did it just come from him messing around in ProTools? I would genuinely love to know, he’s seriously a gifted producer and I wish he’d produce more for other rappers. Somehow Peggy hops into a triplet flow on top of this wonderful mess, the overall impression ending up somewhere in the ballpark of a cartoon character rapping while bouncing on a rusty pogo stick. The man namedrops Ving Rhames, Cannibal Ox, Bernie Mac, and the aforementioned Portia La Rossi all on the same song, and he’s really out for blood on this one, it’s one of his best flows ever. The way he makes the listener wait for the “fuck the underground” line is flawless, he’s slipping between time signatures effortlessly. He does an amazing job of wrangling the herky-jerky rhythms of the beat on the hook, making one of his stickiest choruses yet with the instant-classic line about “borderline dressing in drag.” There’s a beat switch about halfway through the song, which Genius tells me is a second half tilted “The Devil Wears Prada,” but “BALD!” has a lyric about them fucking up his lyrics on Genius, so, you know. It’s not as much fun beat-wise but his bars are just as good, and the song ties up with Peggy repeatedly apologizing and claiming he’s just been “shitted on.” This track is a must-listen, in my opinion, definitely one of the best of the year.

BEST BAR: “I’m covered in money, I’m out for the bag, I flew out the country, borderline dressin’ in drag.”

The sensual R&B of “BODYGUARD!” isn’t a total departure from stuff Peggy has done before - “Jesus Forgive Me, I Am A Thot” had some of those vibes and “Free The Frail” proved that not only can he write a great melodic song, he’s a respectable singer. Bodyguard is Sexy Peggy coming to full fruition though, warm synths draping around  soft beats and lyrics that could’ve come out of any 90’s hit. Peggy’s ear for a nice chord progression is evident, and there’s still strange touches like clipped vocals, off-kilter melodies, background chatter, and what sounds like a bicycle chain winding as part of the beat. This one took awhile to grow on me but it definitely did, and it provides a much-needed moment of calm on the EP.

BEST BAR: N/A, but I do like “who’s gonna turn me? Bitches gotta earn me.”

Then comes the remix of “BALD!” with Denzel Curry. The beat kicks in in the same way as it did before, and Peggy’s first verse is identical, but the entire back two-thirds of the song is one furious verse from Denzel. At first, his section gets a more muscular version of the racing game beat, but midway through, Peggy drops the drums out and just lets Denzel do his thing over a skeletal, washed-out instrumental. He spans a wide array of topics, from his stress over violence in his hometown, to loss of touch with his friends, to how cutting his famous dreads let him feel freer and more in control of himself. It’s a very cool verse, and I appreciate him linking it back to the haircut theme in an original way.

BEST BAR: “Dreadlocks had your boy like Sideshow Bob”

“CUTIE PIE!” puts Peggy on a genuine boom-bap beat, with nonstop flexing about his production chops. He gets pretty specific, and the title is apt given how genuinely adorable the sounds on the beat are. This one rolls almost normal for a JPEGMAFIA song, and despite the trove of weird references and the colorful atmosphere, it feels almost like a breakthrough, like he’s being more realistic or candid in his boasting. Like these are genuine points of pride for him and not just braggadocio, you know? Props for the music video here too, it’s definitely one of the best of the bunch. Super distinctive and weird, with Peggy hiding behind cacti and dancing in the middle of the desert with a near-nude woman.

BEST BAR: “Your beats inaccurate, muddy low end and you over-compressin’, ‘cuz you don’t know what you doin’, so y’all be stackin’ it, don’t know the diff so they just hold and attack it.”

The beat on “THE BENDS!” is almost oppressive, orchestra hits and a glacial pace lending the track a dark atmosphere. Autotune slurs Peggy’s bars, and the lyrics are relentlessly cynical and bleak. His actual political beliefs are obfuscated behind humor like “caught a body in a MAGA hat” as usual, but he ends the song with a breathy “fuck Trump,” so that much is clear. The glowing synth lines under the heavy saw bass give the first verse a cinematic quality, the “fantasies, fantasies, fantasies” line only adding to that. This is one of the briefer cuts, and one of the weaker ones too, but even this one has a ton of personality. 

BEST BAR: “Strap on my hip ‘cuz I’m bitter and old, Mountain Dew sippers, they hating the scroll”

“ROUGH 7” is EP!’s only true miss, and it’s definitely not Peggy’s fault. The beat is shadowy and evasive, and his verse is ice-cold, but the featured rapper, Tommy Genesis, kind of flattens the song. Her adlibs are cringe-inducing and her rapping is flat and devoid of personality, she tries to do the emo-rap scream double-track but it doesn’t work with her style, especially since what she’s rapping about isn’t tragic or even sad at all. The track picks up instantly once Peggy comes on, as usual he can slither into the cracks of an unusual beat and inject his cartoonish, acrobatic character into it. This is a topically unremarkable verse by JPEGMAFIA standards, but he leans into the beat’s rhythms like on “COVERED IN MONEY!” and it ends up working out in his favor and restabilizing the song by the close. His dejected “wow.” and ���huh.” and “nasty.” adlibs help make it too, it’s really kind of ridiculous to compare his adlibs to Genesis’s.

BEST BAR: “Light a square n*** up like Billie Jean.”

Peggy closes the EP with “living single,” probably the second-best song either. He sings a surprisingly heartfelt interpolation of Mariah Carey’s “Always Be My Baby” as the hook, bringing to mind his has-to-be-heard-to-be-believed cover of “Call Me Maybe.” This beat could pass for vaporwave, its slurred groove and downshifted vocal snippets lending an atmosphere to it like Peggy is sitting outside a club smoking after too much alcohol. The stabbing synth riff that breaks through the fuzz keeps him on his toes and lets him work up a relatively speedy flow over the dazed instrumental. I’m not sure why I rate this one so highly, but the vibes are excellent and this is one of the best verses on the project for sure, it’s another one where he really hooks his flow into the off-kilter lurch of the beat. That may be my favorite thing about him as a rapper, the way he can tie himself to a beat and make sure it’s working for him instead of being outshined by it, even if it’s completely insane.

BEST BAR: “Champagne for the pain and sufferin’, fans same color as voice of Tim Duncan” 

Hoo, I wrote a ton about that. Maybe I won’t go track by track for the next EP, this is way too long already. In any case, I think due to its brevity and release method this great little record is going to get passed up on a ton of year-end lists, which is a damn shame. It has easily some of JPEGMAFIA’s best work on it - with no time for filler or botched experiments, Peggy delivered a tight, consistent, outrageously entertaining experimental rap joyride.

[puppys-rhythm-heaven]

remix 5 - 203 bpm

air rally - 180 bpm

rhythm rally 2 - 210 bpm

remix 8 - 220 bpm

,,, and yet according to me, air rally and remix 5′s tap trial and ninja bodyguard/reincarnate parts are both faster.

[puppys-rhythm-heaven]

i bring more dumb descriptions. this time for fever. uh. enjoy.

hole in one: monke

screwbot factory: fillbots but inferior (still good tho)

see-saw: i didn't know see-saw inspection was. a thing

double date: low-key miss the space soccer jokes 😔 always saw them when i first got into rhythm heaven but now i haven't in a while

fever remix 1: as i said in ds. a tropical remix is a requirement. for some reason

fork lifter: the holiest being. the best rhythm heaven. fork

tambourine: monke

board meeting: really don't think this is how it works-

monkey watch: monke- OH FUCK-

fever remix 2: hate that fuckin' rhythm heaven forsaken second tambourine part

working dough: idk why this is so hard honestly-

fever built to scale: DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH, DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH, DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh

air rally: there's a rainbow at the end. seems pretty gay to me

figure fighter: the fart easter egg in megamix will forever be hilarious to me. oh also like. jeb or. whatever. idk-

remix 3: idk but tonight bops

ringside: god this game makes me uncomfy-

packing pests: why is this a job. is the job just packing the candy or are the treat spiders actually part of it. what

micro-row: emulated fever micro-row is such an invigorating experience (it isn't)

samurai slice: okay but why the fuck is the logical reaction to a girl's PINWHEEL getting stolen by a demon to fucking SPAWN KILL the entire species. how is the wandering samurai the good guy here-

fever remix 4: this gets stuck in my head so. fucking. much

catch of the day: threefish fuckin' s u c k

flipper-flop: flippers my beloveds

exhibition match: counting: the game- MONKE-

flock step: BIRB BIRB BIRB BIRB BIRB BIRB BIRB BIRB BIRB BIRB BIRB BIRB BIRB BIRB BIRB BIRB BIRB BIRB BIRB BIRB BIRB BIRB BIRB BIRB BIRB BIRB BIRB BIRB BIRB BIRB BIRB BIRB BIRB-

fever remix 5: 1, 4

launch party: uhhhh something something copypasta go brr. ,,, yeah i got nothing

donk-donk: i. how do you even TRY to describe donk-donk???

bossa nova: playing this in fever when i last played it was just like "hhhhh *moves it from just ok to perfect in my next tier list*"

love rap: why do people hate this so much-

fever remix 6: underrated

tap troupe: i got nothing

shrimp shuffle: there's no i in prawn

cheer readers: good game- YFHTDGTFGF DJ SCHOOL

fever karate man: tbh? i prefer struck by the rain- (lonely storm still bops tho)

fever remix 7: that last tap troupe part is. ,,, yeah

fever night walk: look dreams of our generation bops and all but also. tengoku night walk-

samurai slice 2: WHY IS THE WANDERING SAMURAI NEEDLESSLY COMMITTING MURDER AGAIN-

working dough 2: people hate this for some reason. idk why tbh

fever built to scale 2: god this bops. it's like "DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH, DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH, DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh" but like. 8-bit

double date 2: yeah now i get the space soccer jokes-

not remix 8: it's the second "remix 8" to be speedy (we all know there's only one real remix 8 tho)

love rap 2: this also. isn't. that hard? i. what. love rap's really good honestly why do people hate it so much-

cheer readers 2: i am going to pretend the books in this are from the museum just so i can joke about paddlers being holy beings-

hole in one 2: wow this is so ✨aesthetic✨ (so're remix 3 (tengoku's) and remix 4)

screwbot factory 2: fillbots is still superior. ,,, i mean at least this has a reason for the blackouts-

remix 9: yay it's the transgender song

figure fighter 2: that one part with the combo spam low-key makes me emotional-

micro-row 2: they really did just make munchy monk but again huh

packing pests 2: still wondering what the job here is. like. ARE the treat spiders part of it??? or???

fever karate man 2: this version of lonely storm low-key bops

remix 10: gotta love the fake outs

,,, yeah-