feature: jpegmafia and baltimore rapper freaky confront issues within their community on “the 2nd amendment” | AFROPUNK

Let it never be said in life that JPEGMAFIA hates or never cared about America or the people in it. For the course of three albums, Peggy (nee Barrington Hendricks) has mercilessly criticized American ignorance from all sides with the finesse of your average Fox News pundit. If JPEGMAFIA’s goal in rap was ever evident, it was to eradicate the limp braggadocio at a time where if your favorite rappers weren’t famous, they’d face a bullet anywhere in the United States. With fellow Baltimore rapper Freaky, JPEGMAFIA (nee Barrington Hendricks) has yet again pushed the buttons of America just enough to leave you both raging, crying and laughing all at once, but thinking at the very end of it.

By Lightning Pill*, AFROPUNK contributor

The charm of JPEGMAFIA lies in one huge detail that most casual listeners don’t always get: he is critical of everything in the world, not just white people. He will diss metal music lovers, AND Drake fans all in the same album if he has to, and he is not out of the latter on this album. So, with Freaky, Peggy decides to tackle his bread and butter: the ills of America as we know it today. One that tends to dominate this album are problems within their own community.

If you talk to Peggy, the one thing you’ll learn about him is that he is VERY protective of not only his skin color and those that share it, but of Hip-Hop and his image of it. There is nothing he hates more than rappers who aim to neuter it of its tougher and more offensive characteristics. He not only tackles this on the second verse of “#Trussmidaddi”, but first single the cloudy black “I Might Vote 4 Donald Trump” feels like his and Freaky’s sharp shot at rappers who seem coonish and materialistic enough to actually follow in on the act. “Rinky2K” and “Fatal Fury”, one of the album’s two double feature tracks, is bookended by people saying they wouldn’t live with black people because of their ability to “run down their own neighborhoods”, and is basically a critique on Nino Brown rap (drugs, money, women) and the stereotype of gaining big money off of drugs, only to end in a run-in with the police.

But if there is one song that sums up their entire career, it’s with the two and Hemlock Ernst (nee Future Islands’ Sam Herring) all tackling something that’s a pressing issue in the community amongst people of color: mental health on “Llama Mind”. By improving such, all three rappers take to the mic to clear their head of any stressful thoughts and aim for some kind of healing at the end of it all. In a way, the tape is a metaphor for JPEG’s whole career. With Freaky and other collabs (from Butch Dawson to Frigidaire Karats), Peggy uses hip-hop as not a way to demand peace and healing, but to demand the kind of healing his people deserve: violent, dark and unapologetic in its delivery. God bless America. The 2nd Amendment is out now in the form of a Free MP3 or a CD via Deathbomb Arc. You can stream it on his Soundcloud page.

The 2nd Amendment is out now in the form of a Free MP3 or a CD via Deathbomb Arc.You can stream it on his Soundcloud page.

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