Jeff Gerstmann

While the mere idea of these guys continuing the group after leader Richie Rich went away for awhile on possession charges is cold, if not despicable... this album is a straight-up Oakland classic, as far as I'm concerned. D-Loc shows some solid growth here as an artist, effectively stepping into the spotlight and becoming the lead voice. While The Young Brotha Broski is not an amazing rapper, he holds his own well enough.

Might be easy for some to write off as "just another hip-hop record sampling NWA after Straight Outta Compton came out," but I love it.

Not to overthink it, but there's a real advancement and evolution of production techniques happening here that are straight-up fascinating when compared to JPEGMAFIA's earlier output. This sounds hard in a different way, toning down a little bit of the wilder production found on, say, Scaring the Hoes, in favor of something that takes on more of a heavy-metal-like style, complete with some absolutely killer guitar parts. Or are they "guitar parts?" It doesn't matter. Either way it'd be fun to see JPEGMAFIA team up and tour with a full band for some of this stuff.

Sonically, the way Peggy's vocals play around with quiet/loud and calm/yell-type stuff fits really well with this current batch of material. Lyrically,… More