private & public obsessions

An excuse to talk about JPEGMAFIA

Hello. Here in part because I had dinner with L and she asked me where her email was. Sometimes people need to give you an assignment. 

The only thing I really want to talk about right now is JPEGMAFIA, who released an album at the start of this month. I’ve been listening to the album a lot. Mostly while I’m working, but also while I’m walking, or on the subway, or while I’m cleaning or breaking down cardboard boxes or moving my books and magazines and loose sheets of paper from my bed to my dresser to my bookshelf. This kind of tracks with my recent relationship to music, which has been fractured and unbalanced, where I’ll latch onto one album or song for a short period of time and it’ll be hard for me to listen to anything else. I’ve had a moment with BRAT (who hasn’t), and a week of nothing but Brian Eno after I went to the (extremely good) documentary about him at the Film Forum. But this feels like something else: the most-excitingly complete iteration of a sound I’ve been increasingly obsessed with for the past few years. 

How do I describe it? I often stutter when I try to pin down my feelings about music, because I lack the vocabulary or formal knowledge to say clearly why I like what I like. This tepid Pitchfork review of the album called JPEG’s style a mix of “noise, rap, and punk,” which feels accurate, though I’m always slightly confused by the genre “noise.” I googled it and the AI-generated description says “Noise music is a genre of music that uses noise in an expressive way, often challenging the distinction between musical and non-musical sounds.” Which, sure, that’s reaching for something true, insofar as it seems to describe a certain orientation I recognize in this album (such as when he literally barks into the mic on “Exmilitary”), but what the fuck kind of music is not using “noise in an expressive way”? Who decides the difference between sound and noise? 

But I will concede that he is definitely rapping, he is definitely shredding in a punkish way, and he is definitely making a lot of noise. There’s a few people I love who are doing this (Jean Dawson most belovedly, but also Paris Texas, Teezo Touchdown, Kevin Abstract, Lil Yachty sometimes). This being stretching rap into other genres, other realms, mixing it with other sounds to create this addictive sensation of rhythmic rage, something provocative but also melodic, often (to me) profoundly beautiful. Jean Dawson has his strings; JPEG has his chopped up samples. 

For a taster, I’d rec “either on or off the drugs” or “New Black History” (the latter of which includes a great Vince Staples feature, which is refreshing because I have a fondness for VS & didn’t love his last album) as some of the less abrasive but still interesting songs. I also love “it’s dark and hell is hot”. 

I want to talk briefly though about “Exmilitary”, which I think encapsulates what’s exciting to me about the album. The song is an almost frenetic switching between sounds, and the juxtaposition of them gives me this true thrill, a sensation that makes me open my phone to see who I can send it to. There’s moments when he’s screaming against a clattering of drums, and then layered onto that is a little screetchy screetchy of a DJ turntable, and then the beat breaks to something gentler and he says “this an official decision I don’t give a fuck,” his “fuck” coming out with a specific kind of bravado-by-enunciation that I associate with Megan Thee Stallion. And then he goes straight back into rapping, and then the song switches again, and again. 

(This album also sent me into a rabbit hole of JPEG’s life. I learned that he enlisted in the military at 18 and was deployed overseas. Also that he writes and produces most of his own songs, which probably contributes to their distinctiveness. A quote from his Wikipedia: “I started rapping because no one liked my beats.”)

Part of the reason I want to talk about JPEG here (the private/public space of this Substack) is that no one in my life thus far has forged a deep relationship with this album. I used to have a very private relationship to music, especially in high school when I was first developing my music taste, but since then I have formed deep friendships based around a shared love for a certain sound. This particular sound I still feel relatively private in my love for, in part because it’s kind of an intense one to put on in a social situation. It doesn’t play well as background, or even on speaker—I think headphones help to make sense of all the “noise.” I don’t have a good place for my excitement. So I’m sharing it here. 

Something related I’ve been thinking about: rogue cross-genre collabs. Most recently: “HIGHJACK” by A$AP Rocky and Jessica Pratt. Like….?? How did this song get pitched? Agreed to? Why does it work so well? See also: “Junebug” by Raveena ft. JPEG, “Ghost in the Machine” by SZA ft. Phoebe Bridgers, “Lovin’ Me” by Kid Cudi ft. Phoebe Bridgers. I don’t have that much to say about these, except that I’m interested in them as a trend, and that I think they’re all good.

(I feel this impulse to continue screaming I don’t know anything about music!!! It makes me sheepish, sharing my thoughts like this, as if I have any authority or any idea what I’m talking about. My goal is not to be any sort of expert, but to get better at articulating why certain art moves me. To understand my own taste better.)

There’s something to say here about genre, and the much-portended death thereof. Streaming flattening everything, making everything contextless. Streaming also providing a platform for experimentation. I think what is so cool to me about JPEGMAFIA’s album, about Jean Dawson and all the rest, is the blending of punk and hip hop in particular: two genres with very specific, very divergent aesthetics. They come from specific scenes, tied to specific geographies, in which people were trying to define themselves in new sounds against the mainstream. And then here they are, sitting right next to each other, even on top of each other. Part of the reason I love this, I should say, is the fact that each of these sounds—punk and hip hop—have at different times broken open the world for me. Punk in high school, then hip hop in college gave me entire new registers through which to experience emotions. They’re ribs in the body of my taste, and their meeting touches me in the tenderest part of my spine.

It’s been funny to have this obsession live alongside BRAT summer, a very public obsession, one which I have certainly been participating in. I had a moment last week at a Charli XCX/Chappell Roan drag show where I looked around during “365” and saw everyone singing along. Everyone knowing every word, every beat, every pause, exactly when and where to throw their bodies. It was completely euphoric. A place to put all our excitement.