JPEGMAFIA has never needed a reason to pick a fight, but this time he built one into the title. Experimental Rap, out May 21, is a 25-song album that he produced, wrote and mixed himself, leaning into industrial, punk and electronic influences, per HotNewHipHop. It came with a thesis and a target.
The thesis arrived in an interview with Pigeons & Planes. Asked about the name, Peggy said he was staking out ground he already owned. “So me naming it Experimental Rap is just me laying claim to something I already had,” he said, adding that people treat the term as “some kind of dirty word.” The target was everyone else in the lane: “Other people in this genre, they want to pretend and try to be cool and be like, ‘I don’t want to be experimental rap. I want to be something else …’”
The Earl Sweatshirt problem
He named no names, and it didn’t matter. Earl Sweatshirt answered in the comments on Pigeons & Planes’ Instagram video. Complex says Earl, who appeared to read the remarks as aimed at him, wrote that “Nobody copies cuh because his music is gnarled rough and ugly.” When JPEGMAFIA replied, Earl turned sarcastic: “You know what bro my fault I misspoke. Bro is the king of making crunchy ass music and wearing muay thai shorts, super excited for the album brother (positive) seems like its gonna be really experimental.” JPEGMAFIA’s reply, in Stereogum’s transcription, included “thank you for the promo little guy.”
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The exchange is the best explanation of what the record is for. Peggy has long argued that the experimental lane is empty of people willing to commit, and as Complex notes, he said as much to Billboard last year, calling himself “one of the only risk-takers in rap.” The new album, in effect, is the receipt.
What it sounds like
Complex hears the album move “from pretty melodies one moment to bursts of harsh noise the next.” NME calls it “a scattergun onslaught of disorientating hip-hop that rarely stops for a breather”: lead single “babygirl” hypnotizes with chopped-up production before bursting into early-2000s metal guitars, “¥ (Yen)” sounds “like an arcade machine falling headfirst into the Matrix,” and “Pop This Heat” pivots into gospel flourishes and soaring soul. “Lights” flips Kanye West’s “All of the Lights.”
Watch the video for “¥ (Yen)” above. NME is not entirely convinced, though. At 25 tracks, it says, his flow can sound “surprisingly one-note,” and the paradox at the core of the record is that Peggy is “in a fierce mood, yet somehow plays it safe.” NME places All My Heroes Are Cornballs ahead of it as his most fully realized project.
That makes the record a good test for how much shock still sells in underground rap, a month in which Isaiah Rashad went the other way, slower and more confessional. Both are included in our best new music roundup.
What’s next
JPEGMAFIA takes the album on the road with a 20-date North American run from Sept. 22 in Spokane, Wash., to Oct. 24 in Atlanta, with Redveil and Matt Proxy supporting, plus European festival dates in August at Lowlands, Pukkelpop, All Points East and Electric Picnic.
Experimental RapJPEGMAFIAListen on Apple Music
- Released
- May 21, 2026
- Tracks
- 25, produced by JPEGMAFIA
- Singles
- “babygirl,” “War Over Land”
- Tour
- 20 North American dates, Sept. 22 to Oct. 24
Added to the High Grailed archive on October 12, 2026.
