Review: “I Lay Down My Life for You” – Scattergun Brilliance

Surprise-released just over a week ago, the fifth solo album by Brooklyn-born hip-hop outlier Jpegmafia (Barrington Hendricks, Peggy for short) delivers more of the scattergun brilliance last heard on 2023’s standout LP Scaring the Hoes, his outing alongside maverick rapper Danny Brown. There’s little respite from the quotes, nods, swerves and samples. Here, 90s glance-backs – such as Jade’s Don’t Walk Away, or Method Man’s Bring the Pain – do battle with abrasive guitars, while found sound atmospheres and Brazilian favela funk rub up against references to the NBA, Hendricks’s service (Exmilitary) and plenty of granular rap score-settling. Newsworthy passages include New Black History with Vince Staples, which restates Hendricks’s customary anti-Drake stance, but his scabrous, funny, exasperated raps keep pace with his jump-cut production skills throughout.

Nothing stays still for very long – or, as Jpeg has it, “50 beat-switches a minute, they gonna put me in a Guinness” – but every transition is deftly orchestrated and energising. This rapper-producer’s polemical, lane-swerving bent lasts all the way to the end, where a suite of calmer, more reflective tracks display Peggy’s range, and a mea culpa about the end of a relationship (I Recovered From This).