JPEGMAFIA, an underground, yet polarizing and genre-bending artist teamed up with artist Danny Brown for their first collab album, SCARING THE HOES: Vol 1. Danny Brown, like JPEGMAFIA, is an artist, who broke through into the realm of hip-hop/rap with his wacky spin on it, bringing forth the outskirts of alternative rap to relevance. JPEGMAFIA and Danny Brown have stayed in those outskirts of hip-hop/rap and have continually branched more and more onto what can fall into alternative rap. With JPEGMAFIA being the main producer for much of his music, he finds a way to vastly diversify his production with each of his releases, while still showing touches of his signature styles. Danny Brown, who has previously worked on JPEGMAFIA production, as well as other productions very similar to it, is a natural when it comes to hooks, drawing in the listener instantly with his zany flows, his dumbfounding sayings, and deranged punchlines. When it comes to Danny Brown, he’s not a “comedy rapper,” but more so a comedic genius. And JPEGMAFIA uses his unscathed ability to take shots at people, speaking on political or even social issues, while putting a spin of comedic relief on it. The duo has made something to age like wine.

JPEGMAFIA’s work ethic was in full form on this album. With 100% of the production credits on the album, while having produced the whole album on one machine. The Roland SP-404, which in itself is a legendary piece of equipment, has since been discontinued. The things the P-404 was capable of are outdated as programs on laptops have much more tools to work with. It’s rather unthinkable how JPEGMAFIA produced this album all on one old machine. The vast difference in sounds from each song, the samples, makes the production something quite unreplicable. Putting JPEGMAFIA in a lane of his own.

Now the content of the album. The album is fourteen tracks long and holds a runtime of thirty-six minutes. Starting with the song, “Lean Beef Patty.” The song samples, “I Need a Girl (Part 2)” by Diddy. The sample’s tone is pitched up and looped throughout the song. Then out of nowhere these arcade game-like drums come in and just take over, completely altering the layout of the song. The following song, “Steppa Pig,” has one of the most unique beats I’ve heard. The soft-kicking drums start out being mixed with this majestical old gaming console startup sound, transitioning into this rave-like tone with a mind-clustering amount of sounds. This song is just an energy booster, it gets you going. Following that the title track, “SCARING THE HOES” starts with these heavy hand claps and brings in these screechy violin strings that all combine with these loud drums later in the song. JPEGMAFIA and Danny Brown dive into their weirdness in this song describing their kind of music. JPEGMAFIA is playing as the hoes feel scared and confused by the song. Then the song “Garbage Pale Kids’’ takes one of the most obscure samples I can think of. JPEGMAFIA sampling an old Japanese meat packing commercial. Amid the song, twice this guitar comes in and steals the show.  It makes for one of the most unfathomable beats on the record. Then the song “Burfict.” This song is like being placed in a gladiator fight in a coliseum with these powerful horns, and JPEGMAFIA and Danny Brown going back and forth. Then the song “Orange Juice Jones” is such a wild switch of pace within the album. Sampling Michael Jackson’s song “Dear Michael.” The song has no drums, no heavy-hitting instruments. Just the background sample of Michael Jackson, which is done well. The song “Kingdom Hearts Key” contains such a majestic sample flip that loops throughout the song and is such a beautiful-sounding song. This guitar, graced by beauty, is played in the background, and these hints of speaker-knocking drums make for one magical-sounding song. Also containing the only feature on the album, Redveil adds a nice touch to the ending of the song, reaching into his bag and hearing a Redveil we haven’t before. The song “HOE (Heaven on Earth)” is an incredible gospel-sounding song. It sounds like Dracula on the piano with these eerie keys being played and a beautiful choir in the background at times, whilst on the backend of the track the choir comes in full effect and makes for one of the most angelic sounding beats as of right now.

SCARING THE HOES is one of the most obscure, out-of-touch, even wild-sounding bunch of songs someone will ever hear. There’s nothing else like it out there. From the overwhelming amount of production to the magnitude of Danny Brown and JPEGMAFIA’s ability to complement and bring life to these songs with their wacky flows, comedic abilities, and lyrical continuity. These two tapped into dimensions no other had. They made art out of it. A true representation of evolution in alternative rap.

The album also greatly represents the title of the album. The title, “Scaring the Hoes” is a widely used joke in the music realm to describe music with weirdo slants to it, it’s not widely appealing, and jokingly women would give you weird stares or reactions if you were to play this sort of music around them. And they buy into it with JPEGMAFIA and Danny Brown both being “oddballs” in the rap industry. The music they make doesn’t have an overload of appeal out there. Though, with both artists oozing creativity, and fully embracing their unmatched creativity they use it and make art out of it. They both transcended their images and put their names out on the map, making one of the most madcap-produced albums in some time. An album full of authenticity, and value. Staying true to their style, actively bringing alternative rap out of its shadow, and putting it in a position to rise.