JPEGMAFIA, alias of American rapper Barrington DeVaughn Hendricks, is the author of one of the best albums of 2024: ‘I Lay Down My Life for You’, released just a week ago, is one of the most creative, surprising and exciting hip-hop works of the year.
The mix of styles on JPEGMAFIA’s fifth album, ‘I Lay Down My Life for You’, makes it completely impossible to pin down to a single genre. Like a mad scientist, JPEGMAFIA mixes rap, industrial and electronica “without fear” that his experiments will turn out explosive.
This is the case of the great composition of ‘I Lay Down My Life for You’, which has also served as the first single from the album. In ‘don’t rely on other men’ JPEGMAFIA raps over an industrial hip-hop base and over another of techno punches that gives no respite at any time during the -barely- 2 and a half minutes that the song lasts. At the end, between bell effects and bars that sound shouted through a megaphone, a lavish string arrangement emerges that brings peace to the chaos… and that for some reason is absent from the “single” version, but is on the album version, having been added later.
The production of ‘don’t rely on other men’ hides other surprises, for example, its use of a sample from the series ‘Succession’ at the beginning and end of the song. Suddenly, the voices of Brian Cox and Kieran Culkin seem trapped in the middle of JPEGMAFIA’s sonic bomb, unable to escape.
‘Don’t rely on other men’ is so bold that its lyrics don’t beat around the bush, highlighting JPEGMAFIA’s talent. The rapper calls himself rap’s “cornerback”, its visionary, and, between references to K-pop and drillers, he pulls out a bar that he spits out like fire from his mouth: “Wanna cry on the bus or the Maybach? / If you hate me, my nigga, just say that.” The difference between riding the bus or a Mercedes is obviously in talent. We leave you with his video clip starring Brooks Ginnan.
