There's a particular kind of confidence required to title your album after the thing you've always been accused of making — and then deliver 25 tracks of exactly that. JPEGMAFIA dropped EXPERIMENTAL RAP on May 21st, and the provocation is the point. Barrington Hendricks has been making music that defies easy categorization since his 2018 breakthrough Veteran, and here he is, six albums deep, planting a flag so blunt it loops back around to being funny. The backlash, which Stereogum noted was already gathering before the album even landed — fueled in part by a snarky Instagram flame war with Earl Sweatshirt after Hendricks implied in a Pigeons & Planes interview that others in the sub-genre were merely imitating rather than innovating — may have to wait.

The record opens with "投影の芸術" — a Japanese-language title that translates roughly to "the art of projection" — before sliding into lead single "babygirl," released April 30th. That sequencing is classic Peggy: a disorienting threshold before something that almost sounds like an entry point. The third track, "Burning Hammer," and the fourth, "$ (Money)," establish the album's economic preoccupations early. Those themes deepen at track 11, "¥ (Yen)," the third single, released May 16th alongside a music video — one of three singles the album generated before release, the others being "babygirl" and "War Over Land," which dropped May 7th with an accompanying music video.

What makes EXPERIMENTAL RAP a genuine statement rather than just a brand exercise is the sheer range of what Hendricks pulls off as a solo operation. He wrote, produced, and mixed all 25 tracks himself, with co-production credits going to Billy Ray Schlag on "Pop This Heat," "His Will," and "One Day It Will Be Over," DatPiffMafia co-writing "Meet the Dealers," and Alex Goldblatt co-writing "Lights." The only outside voice is singer Buzzy Lee, who appears on track 20, "Bridges on Fire." That's it. No featured rapper army, no big-name cosigns to smooth the edges. The album was released through AWAL without advance copies sent to critics — Stereogum noted they'd requested one and been declined — which means the conversation started cold, with the music doing all the talking.

The track titles alone function as a kind of provocation index. "The Ghost of Emmett Till" sits at track 9. "Since I Met Ye" at track 10. "TSAR BOMBA" at 13. "Lights" at 16 — the track Stereogum's first-listen dispatch identified as a full-track meditation built around Kanye West's "All of the Lights." "The 1st Amendment" at 24. The closing track's title is a full aphorism — "You will always lose money chasing women, but you will never lose women chasing money" — which is either the most cynical thing on the album or the funniest, and probably both. Stereogum's first-listen dispatch also noted heavy gospel sampling and prominent guitar throughout. The album's blend of rap, rock, punk, industrial, and gospel is the logical endpoint of years of restless cross-genre work.

Hendricks has framed EXPERIMENTAL RAP as his "era-defining magnum opus," a claim that would read as hubris from almost anyone else. But consider the trajectory: a collaborative EP with Flume in 2025, production credits for Kanye West and BTS in the same period, a supporting slot on Linkin Park's From Zero World Tour. He's been operating in a genuinely weird cross-genre space for years, and the album is the logical endpoint of that restlessness. Come September, The Experimental Rap Tour hits 20-plus North American cities — kicking off September 22nd in Spokane and running through dates at Brooklyn Paramount, New York's Terminal 5, Chicago's Aragon Ballroom, and Atlanta's Tabernacle, with support from redveil and matt proxy — preceded by European festival appearances at Lowlands, Pukkelpop, All Points East x Outbreak in London, and Electric Picnic in Dublin. The live show has always been where Peggy's ideas land hardest. The album gives him a lot to work with.