He solely began rapping as a result of his beats have been too experimental for some other artists to take up. And as an alternative of compromising his confrontational sound for business attraction, he labored up the experimental hip-hop ladder himself, turning into revered by web hip-hop nerds and different left-field rappers alike. Each album, it appeared, was crazier than the final: on every, area of interest politics references, random disses in direction of random artists, and sound collage-esque samples butted up towards one another in aggressive, unusual mashups which can be equally exhilarating and complicated.
I Lay Down My Life For You had the potential to be his most impartial, inventive mission, even amongst one of the vital avant-garde discographies in hip-hop: it’s his first solo album since he left his label two years in the past, it was launched on the peak of his controversy within the public eye (principally from working with the Nazi-leaning Ye, previously referred to as Kanye West), and it was surprise-released on a Thursday. Critically, who drops on a Thursday?
That isn’t what we acquired. As a substitute, I Lay Down My Life For You principally sees JPEGMafia working at cruise management. Fortunately, his cruise management remains to be fairly good; regardless of its flaws, this album remains to be a terrific displaying. However for an artist whose each work was brimming with intention and boldness, even Peggy’s occasional lapses into musical cliches on this album are disappointing.
Maybe the defining signature of Peggy’s music is his characteristically wild manufacturing, and this newest album is as eclectic as any: he pivots from nu-metal to reggae to glitch on a dime, and it’s principally a pleasure due to it. I Lay Down My Life For You sees tracks as assorted as “JPEGULTRA!”, which is backed by a slowly-evolving jazz-funk pattern that Peggy and featured artist Denzel Curry float effortlessly over, and “Don’t Put Something On The Bible,” the place semi-frequent collaborator Buzzy Lee turns two minutes of completely beautiful chamber people earlier than Peggy even begins rapping.
However, for the primary time, a number of that variedness someway feels predictable – or, a minimum of, much less attention-grabbing than regular. For instance, chunk of those songs begin with a recognizable pop or hip-hop pattern (or, in a single case, a pattern of HBO’s Succession) that then will get chopped as much as type the spine of a beat. Others introduce an electrical guitar solo within the second half to fluctuate issues up. These are cool tips for a couple of tracks at greatest, however after they dominate a lot of the album, issues begin to really feel a little bit boring – particularly from an artist who has spent his profession avoiding triteness just like the plague. Positive, this might be some other rapper’s wildest launch. However, following up a discography of avant-garde hip-hop, it appears like Peggy entered into this album making an attempt to sand off lots of his tough edges – and it makes for a considerably much less thrilling album in consequence, though nonetheless a terrific one.
Sadly, that additionally brings out one other deficiency: with out the fixed, overflowing creativity of his earlier work, Peggy’s lyrical shortfalls are extra apparent.
JPEGMafia’s power as a rapper has at all times been outlined, a minimum of partially, by the power of his manufacturing. Particularly close to the later level of his profession, a few of his verses have felt extra like sound poetry: the circulate, relative to the beat, is extra vital than the phrases themselves. On Scaring The Hoes, Peggy’s distinctive collab album with Danny Brown from final 12 months, Peggy reused bars, made a couple of too many chronically on-line references, and usually didn’t say a lot of substance – however the vitality was so good that it doesn’t actually matter. Equally, I Lay Down My Life For You has a handful of witty and attention-grabbing bars, however for each such second, there’s a litany of the identical sorts of lyrics: asking haters why they’re hating in the event that they’re broke, or asking followers why they’re driving his dick, or regurgitating hip-hop cliches that sound so inauthentic that they could as nicely be empty syllables. And people moments stand out greater than they ever have on this album. There are some actual battle bars right here: “I am with my bi bitch, we being bipolar,” or “You retain yapping, I open my Money App / I ball, head on the sack,” or the just about comically embarrassing “I am so terminally on-line, goddamn, I gotta examine myself”.
Largely, that doesn’t matter. By design, Peggy’s lyrics have at all times come second to manufacturing. However when the manufacturing slumps, even the slightest bit, these bars really feel a lot extra egregious.
These shortfalls don’t permeate all of I Lay Down My Life For You, although: Peggy’s greatest performances come over the last leg of the album, when he finds the time to get introspective. Throughout these tracks, he turns the temperature down and begins rapping extra tenderly, typically being decreased to whispers, as he displays on his profession and previous struggles, melancholy, flaws as a romantic associate, and previous traumas. Even when he’s boasting, like he does on the remainder of the album, it feels totally different over instrumentals impressed extra closely by classical music and people than by industrial rock and growth bap. Peggy is in high type throughout these moments of introspection: his verses are at their most uncliched and heart-wrenching, his rapping is extra dynamic, his beats are completely attractive. However these inward-looking moments make up solely a couple of third of the album, and on the remainder of it, he sounds much less all for music than he has in a very long time. Minus these moments of affecting ardour, I Lay Down My Life For You doesn’t really feel like a stylistic shift or an evolution as a lot because it seems like his regular self working at 80 %.
Amongst all of this criticism, I really feel like I ought to reiterate that this album is fairly good – the beats are good, the rapping is decently energetic and forceful. However within the context of Peggy’s discography, the place he’s invariably flowed like all hell over probably the most unique manufacturing in latest hip-hop reminiscence, this falls a little bit flat. I Lay Down My Life For You is nice – however it isn’t fairly adequate.
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