The three biggest hip-hop influences in JPEGMAFIA’s life
The hip-hop world is a tough nut to crack. There are, by and large, two avenues to go down. You can either appeal to the mainstream, tint your work with pop idealism, or hope that you hit enough of the populous with a catchy hook to guarantee success. Or, you embrace alternative culture and grind your way to the top. JPEGMAFIA is certainly one of the latter.
The rapper is an audacious, genre-defying force in the contemporary music landscape, pushing boundaries with a punk ethos that’s rare in today’s hip-hop. His sound is a chaotic amalgam of noise, experimental beats, and raw, visceral lyricism. Like most great artists, it isn’t subject to one line of inspiration and, instead, draws from a well of influences as diverse as his personal experiences.
Having attempted to find his own way in the world of music, JPEGMAFIA’s rise is a testament to the power of perseverance and one of the early DIY projects that truly flourished almost entirely off the back of the internet. Platforms like Bandcamp and SoundCloud offered the performer a chance to share his mixtapes with a wider audience. They soon gained traction and began to catapult the star into the collective consciousness.
His breakthrough came with the release of Veteran in 2018, an album that cemented his reputation as an innovator. The record is a frenetic blend of glitchy production and scathing commentary, a reflection of his time spent living in diverse locales like Baltimore, Alabama, and even Japan during his military service. A notoriously political rapper, unafraid to address themes usually outside the realm of hip-hop, one might expect his rap influences to range wildly across the musical spectrum. However, when asked to name the three stars who most notably affected his work, he pointed to a trio of mighty rap pillars.
“Three of my biggest influences in rap would probably be Kanye West, Ice Cube, and MF DOOM,” he told Jack Robinson. One artist he believed to be the complete package: “Kanye because he’s the best hip hop artist, to me, not the best rapper, I was talking with Milo about this earlier, he’s not the best rapper, and he’s not the best producer, but he’s the best artist overall, he’s the best at presenting his ideas perfectly, like no one can copy that.”
But it was the West Coast rapper that really shaped his view on the hip[-hop world: “Ice Cube, he’s influenced me the most, because before Amerikkka’s Most Wanted,” he explained. “I didn’t know you could rap about political shit, and be on some street shit. I felt like when you rapped about politics, you had to be preachy and whatever, but Ice Cube broke that down for me, like oh I can say ‘Fox News suck my dick’, like there’s no rule against that.”
With the two giants squared off, what about MF DOOM the legendary and mysterious figure? “That’s the father,” shared JPEGMAFIA, “like he has one of the most original styles, like I feel that DOOM is an internet rapper that foreshadowed the internet, like he’s the godfather of internet rap, almost every rapper is influenced by him in some way. So that’s my top three.”
JPEGMAFIA’s fearless experimentation and relentless pursuit of originality ensure that he remains a vital, influential figure in the ever-evolving world of music, and within the three hip-hop artists he believed influenced him most, you can note that those values are held with the highest esteem.
JPEGMAFIA’s three favourite hip-hop stars:
- Kanye West
- Ice Cube
- MF DOOM