If you have read just about any review of a JPEGMAFIA show, you’ll see that everyone uses the word ‘raw’ to describe the experience. I would know; I’ve used it every time I’ve reviewed his shows. It’s used because, at every show of his, you’ll find Peggy on stage alone – no crew hype man or DJ – just him and his laptop. He plays the beats as he chooses, often replacing the intros of his songs with guttural screams. There’s very little set production, typically just plumes of artificial smoke and flashing lights. If it sounds insane, it’s because it is insane.
This time around was no different.
As the lights went down, plumes of smoke filled the stage. Peggy emerged, wearing a cowboy hat and a fur coat, both cynically ironic images symbolic of exactly the capitalistic Americanisms, the target of much of his acrimony. From this exact moment until the very last song, the crowd was beyond hyper. There was an incredible amount of pushing and jumping and moshing. Incredible because it’s quite something to maintain that level of frenzy for over 90 minutes straight.
He opened with “Jesus Forgive Me, I Am A Thot’; that title alone should be demonstrative enough of his brand of snide, unfiltered social commentary. By most standards, the level that Peggy was at it here would be the ceiling for most others, but JPEG was just getting started.
Following this he jumped into a couple of his recent classics, “HAZARD DUTY PAY” and “BALD!” which elicited equally enthusiastic responses from the already amped-up crowd. Even so early, people were making a move to the flanks to catch a breath from the action. The ever-familiar acapella cover of “Call Me Maybe” came out. Often, it’s used as a reprieve by Peggy, a break from the action, and judging by how early it was performed you get a sense that not only was Peggy already at full flight, but that there were lots more to come.
He moved through the singles from “don’t rely on other men” and ‘SIN MIEDO” from his latest album, I LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR YOU, followed by a couple of his classics from his breakout 2018 album, Veteran. Having played songs from both albums right after each other, you get a feel for the breadth of his creativity. Compare how the beat for “Baby I’m Bleeding” off Veteran is built on a vocal snippet – Holly Hunter saying “only” in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) – just the same way the beat for “don’t rely on other men” is built on a vocal snippet of Brian Cox saying “I hear you went down” from Succession. Where “Baby I’m Bleeding” slams right in the middle of your chest, “don’t rely on other men” haunts you, escalating to an operatic climax.
Following a smattering of songs from his collaboration album with Danny Brown, SCARING THE HOES, JPEG returned to ILDMLFY, from “JPEGULTRA!” to “PROTECT THE CROSS”, he brought out all the bangers from both the album and its deluxe album follow up.
“I don’t fully know the words to this next one” Peggy remarked, “I don’t use no backing track like these punk…rappers”. Such remarks manage to get the crowd jumping some more because such an aversion to order and preparation is precisely indicative of what makes Peggy the “left-wing Hades”. These words were the preamble to “Valentine’s Day Freestyle 2025”, his newest single and one that even though, like Peggy, not many in the crowd knew the words, its performance only added to the fervour. The night was wrapping up; you could tell because perhaps the only calmer songs of the night were played, “Free the Frail” and “either on or off the drugs”. You could also tell we were at that point because the fur coat Peggy had relinquished early on had found its way back out.
With another plume of smoke, JPEGMAFIA was gone, and the lights came back up revealing the sweat-drenched, red-faced exhaustion that had swallowed each concert attendee. No doubt Peggy would have looked the same; that’s just the nature of a JPEGMAFIA kind of show. Raucous and indiscriminately loud, raw and frenzied. It was what everyone expected and exactly what everyone got. There are no large set pieces or fancy stage tricks because, for someone fuelled with such acrimony towards the thousands of exploitative industry execs, instigative keyboard warriors and phony flexers, the only way to deliver your message is via a slug to the chest.
FOUR STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
Header image credit: Diana Nguyen
