Album Review: LP! by JPEGMAFIA

On the front cover of JPEGMAFIA 's sarcastically-titled LP!, the rapper is depicted beneath a street light, head faced downward, clouded by a veil of smoke. This is the unwanted online version released to appease his label deal with EQT and Republic Records. But then there's the offline variant of LP!. Its cover art is similar at first glance as we encounter Peggy with a similar head-downward repose - except he's unobscured.

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The chip on JPEGMAFIA's shoulder has only grown bigger with time. His music--a blend of rap, noise, and punk filtered through the cultural vacuum of the internet--has always existed in the space between brash and sly, hollowing out the center of that Venn diagram with a jagged shovel. Every project, from 2015's Communist Slow Jams onward, sways from hazy synths to bludgeoning boom-bap to earnest covers of pre-Y2K ballads on a dime, mixing and matching the styles as fresh perspectives on a well-established formula.

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Nobody does it like JPEGmafia. It's a common trope to suggest that a rapper walks in their own lane, or have developed their own space; it's easy to say, but a lot more difficult to do. Across four albums in five years, JPEGmafia has done exactly that, pirouetting between defiantly left-field production choices, mosh pit anthems, and lyrics that moves from a cross-section of the sub-conscious mind to throwaway jokes.

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