JPEGMAFIA l LP!

Though just as charged and confrontational as any of his other projects, the rapper’s latest album is uninhibited and proud of it.

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. His two breakout records—2018’s independent Veteran and his 2019 major-label debut All My Heroes Are Cornballs—mine from different ends of the noise-rap spectrum, but JPEG’s humor and world-weary thoughts on racism and music industry bullshit are the adapters through which he’s able to process any musical energy. His rage is palpable while being offset by a deep passion for craft and left-field pop culture reference.

JPEG’s notoriety has increased exponentially since the late 2010s, netting him guest spots on tours with Vince Staples and his first entry on the Billboard 200 with Cornballs. This rise has also eroded what little patience he had for the rap industry machine, and on his latest project, LP!, his final under EQT and Republic, he’s practically bursting a vein at the idea of freedom: “My time in the music industry is over because I refuse to be disrespected by people who aren’t [behaving] respectably in the first place,” he said in a note on the album’s Bandcamp page. LP! supercharges the ire and catharsis of this moment in his career, playing up the contrast between JPEG’s abrasive cheekiness and his warmest batch of beats to date.

For starters, LP! has been released in two forms: the “Online” version—uploaded to streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music, etc.—and the “Offline” version available on YouTube and Bandcamp, which boasts a handful of extra songs, extended versions of existing ones, and a slightly tweaked tracklist. Even the project’s title—the most basic descriptor imaginable with an exclamation point at the end—feels like a middle finger or at least a metatextual rib poke.

JPEG’s sense of humor is clearly intact, and his myriad influences continue to pull his work in strange directions. A three-song run near the middle of the album typifies these strengths: The ghostly wails and funky bass behind JPEG’s thundering voice on “REBOUND!” are immediately followed by “