Review Summary: đ±
Oh yes. There go Danny Brown and JPEGMAFIA again, scaring the hoes like it was a pitch-dark 10:30PM on the night of Halloween for Hoes, these hypothetical haters, women all of them if the vocal samples from the title track as well as the title itself are to be believed, alternately groaning and sucking their teeth as Peggy and Danny bang on trash cans and slam lines of that *** that killed Prince and blithely say stuff like âeat your ass like Iâm cannabis!â and go absolutely bananas on the Japanese pop samples. So it is that JPEGMAFIA and Danny Brown instantly introduce to SCARING THE HOES (Danny Brown and JPEGMAFIA, 2023) a context not of the aesthetic affront of SCARING THE HOESâ musical ways and means but of the two guys saying that itâs like that, that it will surely scare any bona fide hoe. JPEGMAFIA and Danny Brown have made their careers out of affrontery, though I admit to knowing JPEGMAFIAâs music way more than Danny Brownâsâmy âresearching the hoesâ (which I guess in addition to mirroring the structure of the title makes Danny and Peggy the hoes! Oh ***!) playlist is over 8 hours long and it starts with BLACK BEN CARSON and that album sucksâbut Peggyâs is more this Baudrillard-hyperreal swirling void of antipathy where every word is a signifier, a sign with an arrow on it pointing at someone, and the sign says â*** this guyâ or whatever, but the guy is faceless (I imagine him or her or them as a Rene Magritte person with a blanket or a superimposition of a tree in the sky over their entire head) because JPEGMAFIA for someone whose lyrics reference the sins of other people so much isnât so much one for specifics.
Danny Brown raps about living with the emotional spiritual and physical baggage generated by the actions and behaviors of a man society might call a hedonist, a reckless soul, a bad person. He is turned partially or fully inward at all times. He has what Harold Bloom says is good about Shakespeare: true interiority. As we all know from HAMLET, this quality of having a depth not accessed merely through comprehension of surface-level elements is I guess best set in relief by witnessing someone pitched in a situation where itâs somehow been made especially difficult for the person being scrutinized or narrativized to take an action in his best interest, his decision always to opt out of decision-making by making the bad one, his withering conscience pulling on the crusty cuff of his sweater (or chain-link armor or whatever) like an abandoned child, begging him please to stop, to just stop. Or to start I guess for Hamlet. Hmm well the magic of Danny Brownâs lyrics is that you can see both of these figures so clearly, even in the songs that exude pure hedonism, no counterpoint or irony necessaryâyou just feel it, that tug, that plea.
I listen to JPEGMAFIAâs albums way more than I do Danny Brownâs, though, and anticipate his projects greatly, whereas I didnât even listen to uknowhatimsayin?
This I suppose is in large part though I canât imagine 100% because of JPEGMAFIAâs production. I think JPEGMAFIA probably has the highest mean average rating in my head among producers from whom Iâve heard as many beats as him, and thatâs not a terrible metric for âbest hip-hop producer of all timeâ even if it isnât the only one. Hereâs a quick rundown of some cool production stuff that goes on during your favorite album ever themed around scaring hoes, SCARING THE HOES.
âThe synth line of âLean Beef Pattyâ waves around its melody proudly like the siren thatâs driven by a cop but heâs a DETECTIVE.
Folks, I took the dibs on this album and then I said Milo could write it and then he said that he tried to write about it three times and failed each time weâre getting through this go to the deli and crush a can of Coke go to your sink and drink some water like James Murphy once said this is happening.
âThat bizarre transition between Peggy and Dannyâs (I got distracted by my phone for twenty minutes between writing the stuff before and after this parentheses because I am writing all of this in my iPhoneâs Notes app) verses on âLean Beef Pattyâânot so much the weirdo jungle (?) second part of the transition so much as the deceleration that somehow generates imagery of a robot suddenly at half its power. The chitterchatter of the voices and guitar (?) trickles is like the insanely scary part of âAmericansâ by Oneohtrix Point Never but not insanely scary. God, thereâs a weird way in which Peggy does resonate this all-bark-no-bite thing in a lot of formal particulars but itâs a good songâŠ
âThe maybe simulated-sidechain bass stomp of âSteppa Pigâ. That last one was long but weâre blowing through these now. Like a pig stepping in mudâŠ(the beat hopefully not this bullet point)
âI donât like the chorus to the song âSCARING THE HOESâ they were already pushing their luck the beat is fine. The beat to âGarbage Pale Kidsâ is again that JPEGMAFfery of something that operates brandishing all the signifiers of total nasty ugliness but itâs like, câmon, anyone who can accept that rupture and weird *** and noise can sometimes bang and be beautiful should kinda get the cut of âGarbage Pale Kidsââ Seven-Dwarves-in-the-factory gib. I donât mean this as a knock or a backhanded complimentâitâs one of my favorite songs of the year.
This is not a mere track by track review. Letâs switch it up. Muscle confusion. I dunno I feel like itâs kinda dumb to have written a second of these free-associative reviews for the same album but the staff had to do what it had to do.
I kinda donât love âBurfict!,â which is kinda like the horn-blast-of-triumph of LP! (2022)âs âREBOUND!â but a little too burfict. And then I donât much like the two songs after it either. This batting average on a 14-track release means this album is overrated relative to the choir itâs preaching to, the self-selected non-hoes, the ones on Rateyourmusic who collectively say not only that this album is the best released thus far in 2023 but also that this album is better than like PAULâS BOUTIQUE (1989) or ONLY BUILT 4 CUBAN LINX (1995) or STANKONIA (2000). I think we have inherent reason to fear those who advertise subversion and receive genuflection from the massesâyeah, even those masses. But then!
ââHOE (Heaven of Earth)ââs chord pattern (overlaid with genuinely janky glitch-drums) is so righteous and so weird and bright and quirky and funky that I think of the 1973 weirdo pseudo-Blaxploitation psychedelic religious experimental vampire movie GANJA & HESS. (The cover to SCARING THE HOES 2023 is a clear Blaxploitation homage.)
You thought it was vanquished, this format! You thought wrong and if you thought somehow that itâd be done after this paragraph you thought wrong again, because:
ââKingdom Hearts Keyâ is the cloud-rap-on-steroids psychedelic weeaboo reverie JPEGMAFIA was always meant to produce, even though he has like fifteen songs like that. Speaking of which:
If you donât like (this is the beginning of a new part) literally all of the following songs your taste in beats or your inability to compartmentalize unusual or embarrassing or silly or aggressive rapping styles to savor better the beats within is completely out of joint, topsy-turvy, not gonna cut it: â1539 N. Calvert,â âThug Tears,â âI Cannot ***ing Wait Until Morrissey Dies,â âJesus Forgive Me, I Am a Thot,â âKenan vs. Kel,â âBeta Male Strategies,â âDIRTY!,â âBALD!â and thatâs being conservative. Mostly bad song titles; all slammers. Hall of Fame. Hang his jersey from the rafters already dude is a legend.
âanyways âKingdom Hearts Keyâ has an almost aleatoric beat changeup in the middle of the first verse (by Peggy) and then never again, but the real structural coup is the inclusion of a verse from a rapper Iâve never heard of otherwise named redveil whoâs all like âWe got NEXT hoe clear the FRONT been throwin' my ELbow in this ***â as the beat does one of its pseudo-aleatoric departure-arrival tempo switchup things and you are standing up stomping around throwing ***ing elbows on the Bx12 bus at 8AM on the way to school. Again, the beauty/rupture dynamic lands so decisively on the side of beauty, but the *** bangs bangs bangs.
Thereâs a part of me that wants to say that we have ourselves become the Hoes in letting ourselves be so easily drafted into the ranks of those who are proud to be scaring them, but thatâd be Pathologizing the Hoes moreso than I have been perhaps. I also really like the album, and I would give it 4 bags of popcorn.
