Watch JPEGMAFIA Preview His “Disappointing” New Album With Kenny Beats
Late last year, Baltimore rap expressionist JPEGMAFIA teamed up with exploding producer Kenny Beats for the fired-up single “Puff Daddy.” And earlier this year, JPEGMAFIA was the first guest on The Cave, Kenny Beats’ great YouTube freestyle series. Lately, JPEGMAFIA has been working on a new album, which he keeps saying will be “disappointing,” in a recent Stereogum interview and elsewhere. This seems to be a whole bit. We don’t really know anything about the album yet. But last night, JPEGMAFIA shared a video of himself and Kenny Beats sitting down to talk about the album, to listen to it, and to get stoned.
Fair warning here: This video is 16 minutes long, and it features only the tiniest bit of new music. It is still extremely watchable. JPEGMAFIA and Kenny Beats are both truly engaging rap personalities, and just hearing the two of them riffing on the nature of creativity in rap is a whole lot of fun. There is some good-natured dunking in there: Kenny making fun of Peggy’s anime-inspired mousepad, Kenny talking about how stressful it is to hear new JPEGMAFIA music, Kenny saying, “The fake Death Grips thing was working.” But it’s mostly a real conversation about how to express yourself in a 2019 rap context.
A lot of the video is Peggy and Kenny discussing “Jesus Forgive Me, I Am A Thot,” the new single that JPEGMAFIA released last week. But there’s also a cool new bit: Peggy has adapted the freestyle that he first rapped on The Cave, giving it a new beat and turning it into a new song. We hear a bit of that, and it sounds good. Watch the video below, and while you’re at it, watch JPEGMAFIA’s episode of The Cave.
We don’t really know anything about JPEGMAFIA’s new album yet, and in the video, they bleep out the damn song titles. I bet we’ll get it soon, though.