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Joey Valence & Brae and JPEGMAFIA team up for new single WASSUP
Watch the video for Joey Valence & Brae’s new single WASSUP, featuring JPEGMAFIA, following its live debut at Governor’s Ball.
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JPEGMAFIA: “People have this idea of me, but it’s a projected image”
From walking around school “screaming Numb like an asshole” to supporting Linkin Park at Wembley Stadium later this month, JPEGMAFIA has been on a genuinely breath-taking journey. Joining the alt. hip-hop superstar on the road, we get to know the man behind the music, and learn that his time is very much now…
- Words:
- David McLaughlin
- Photography:
- Gobinder Jhitta
Nothing makes sense in 2025. The second-term leader of the free world still thinks that climate crisis is a hoax. Stock markets are at the mercy of fragile egos and social media meltdowns. AI-powered refrigerators can now identify the members of your family by their individual voices.
We. Are. Cooked.
Earlier this year, University Of Portsmouth scientist Melvin Vopson claimed he’d uncovered evidence that we live in a simulation. Let’s hope he was onto something.
In an overstimulated, desensitised and increasingly chaotic world, maybe JPEGMAFIA is one of the few things that does make sense. Nihilism, cultural entropy and distorted reality has spewed forth an artist ripe for these times.
Speaking to Kerrang! from his tour bus in Connecticut, en route to its next stop in Portland, ‘Peggy’ is up with the worms and putting in the work. Ahead of his visit to these shores opening for Linkin Park at Wembley Stadium, the alternative hip-hop maverick, born Barrington DeVaughn Hendricks, is a whirlwind of energy and charisma, all before he’s even had his first sip of coffee.
If you caught him at last summer’s Outbreak Fest, you’ll already know why he’s a natural fit for the nu-metal icons’ From Zero World Tour. If you’re about to find out what he’s all about for the first time, strap yourself in for something special. JPEGMAFIA is not your average artist. Not your average anything.
“Most rock bands have five people in them. I am five people,” he spits, conveying the kind of conviction and braggadocio most folks – actually, most rock stars – can only ever dream of possessing.
Then again, Peggy is as much a piss-taker as he is a provocateur. How serious he is about any of this is up for debate. Absurdist song titles like I Just Killed A Cop Now I’m Horny, Does This Ski Mask Make Me Look Fat? and I Cannot Fucking Wait Until Morrissey Dies, might scream deeply unserious edgelord, but the music he’s dedicated his adult life to is anything but a joke.
Fearlessly blending raw hip-hop with experimental noise and punk rock spirit, his radicalism, rage and rebellion ooze through lyrics that shimmy from politics and culture to personal trauma. It’s messy, it’s fluid, it’s satirical and it’s venomous, defying neat categorisation due to gleefully pulling from anywhere and everywhere. As pioneers of borrowing the best bits from elsewhere themselves, it makes a ton of sense that Linkin Park would bring him out on the road with them. Aside from the obvious draw of playing to a new audience and a well-earned payday, it’s also a chance for Peggy – the person – to experience one of life’s beautifully rare and satisfying full-circle moments.
“Man, I used to walk around school screaming Numb like an asshole,” he says, revealing how, at 11, he hero-worshipped the band he’s now about to tour with at 35.
“That shit’s hard. That band got some nuts on them from the get-go, man. I used to burn CDs for people and I’d get gang-bangers, hood people and street guys walking up to me saying, ‘Don’t tell nobody, but hey yo, listen, put that Linkin Park on there…’ like they was trying to hide it. But I’m telling you, that shit was like crack in the projects, man!” he laughs.
“Most rock bands have five people in them. I am five people”
If you’re looking for a portrait of those projects and what life was like for Peggy growing up, good luck with that.
“Don’t nobody know shit about me,” he staunchly asserts. “Don’t know where I went to school and don’t know who my family is, because I didn’t put that out there. People have this idea of me, mostly from being online, but it’s a projected image and a projected idea.”
This level of privacy, like every detail that goes into his art, is intentional; a choice he remains firmly protective of. For now, at least, but more on that in a bit.
What is known is that Peggy grew up in Brooklyn, New York, where he was raised in a devoutly religious household by Jamaican parents. The family later upped sticks to rural Alabama, around the time he turned 13. Away from the cosmopolitan sprawl of the big city, the deep south provided his first exposure to racism and in the years that followed things got murky.
In 2021, he tweeted about a “sexually, verbally and physically abusive childhood” and vowed never to speak about it again. At the age of 18, he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force, serving time in Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan, North Africa and Japan, before being honourably discharged for calling out misconduct by higher-ups.
Whether it was escapism or pure survival, making music became a constant. Music that was inevitably shaped by the harsh and isolating experiences of his youth. Many of the details of his life may not be public knowledge, but they live inside the scars of those first creative forays. It’s right there in the outsider energy and the inherent distrust of power, pulsing through every fierce beat and bar.
From early 2011 experiments under the alias Devon Hendryx to the abrasive blast of his 2018 JPEG breakthrough Veteran, Peggy’s catalogue traces a jagged and uncompromising path. Even as the sounds mutated and styles switched up, from chopped samples and scratchy lo-fi textures to soulful melodics later on, the through-line has remained one of absolute freedom and zero compromise.
Relocating from Japan to Baltimore circa 2015, he fell in with the hardcore crowd, against a backdrop of a city gripped by riots after a young black man, Freddie Gray, died while in police custody. It was here the JPEG story began in earnest and the foundational work for the artist he is today first flourished.
“I used to play with nothing but hardcore bands when I was coming up,” he reflects, further highlighting his grounding in the alternative. “I toured in vans, slept on couches, played at house parties… I’ve done all that shit, bro. That’s how I learned how to perform. That’s probably why my music is influenced with that shit, too. Punk was already doing its thing and hip-hop was doing its thing and I think they’ve always been intertwined with each other. At the beginning of hip-hop, the only places that would book those artists were small punk and DIY spaces.”
All of that fed into a sound that people still struggle to define. Read anything about JPEGMAFIA’s music and you’ll find people flapping around for extremes. Chaotic but controlled. Funny and furious. Smart yet silly. He makes the end result look easy and seamless – natural even – but that belies the philosophy and grind that goes into it all. None of this happens by chance.
“It’s honestly hard,” he admits of his creative process. “But that’s what the fuck I’m here to do. I’m here to take anything I hear, from any genre, put it together and present it in a way that’s easy to understand. I’m like a war general going in with a plan and executing it. My thing is I’m a master editor. I’m Steph Curry [NBA superstar who made shooting from 30 feet look normal]: I step in the motherfucking booth and I’m hitting that three-point shot every time.”
All of this comes steeped in a chronically online, memeified worldview. That means sending up even the darkest of subjects, reflecting the farce of modern life with the irreverence it probably deserves. One minute he’s rapping about the political hot potatoes of the day, the next he’s referencing the latest WWE shenanigans.
“Memes are our lifestyle. Memes are the way we speak,” Peggy says, illustrating just how fried his brain’s been by the internet. “Being online at this point is like walking outside. It’s not a personality trait anymore, it’s not 2009. The whole world is internet centric. The people that live in the real world, we use the internet for everything, bro. AI is here. Look around, man. Shit is like a cartoon. Everything’s a fucking cartoon.”
Speaking to Peggy, you get the sense gallows humour is an existential necessity. When you’ve seen what he’s seen and been through the hardships he has, humour becomes a natural refuge. He can, however, also get real when the mood hits. He’s sharp enough to recognise how his military past and the brutal experiences of his youth have made him this way, but have they created an armour that helps him navigate the music industry or present an obstacle, to unlearn that toughness in an effort to retain some humanity?
“That’s an interesting question. No-one’s really asked me that before,” he admits, wrestling with the conundrum for a minute. “I would say yes to both. It’s taught me to be mentally bulletproof. Because when you go to war, your mind? Shit changes, bro. It’s just different. To join the military, period, you got to be in a certain mindset.”
It’s clear that military service taught him resilience, but it may have also made vulnerability harder. He’s characteristically candid about the duality.
“It gave me this coat of armour, in a way,” he considers. “Like, none of this shit in the music industry is serious. I might pretend like it is, but I don’t really give a fuck. I’m just like, ‘None of you people are real.’ Like, the trust fund kids who are just here because of nepotism? They don’t do shit. I literally got here from scraping and clawing, so when I meet somebody who just kind of popped up in this motherfucker, I’m like, ‘Oh, whatever.’”
But something’s changed in recent years. For all the fiery bravado, trolling content and internet-fuelled, anarchic energy, Peggy’s been letting the mask slip a little. He’s even started to approach art as a form of therapeutic processing.
“In my newer music, yes,” he nods, when asked if this has reopened old wounds. “Before [2024’s] I LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR YOU, it was more about protecting that. It was almost like putting out what I wanted people to see about me. But after that, I decided to be more vulnerable.”
This shift, it seems, wasn’t triggered by cataclysm or crisis. It’s a result of the quiet, creeping wisdom brought on by age.
“I’m just more comfortable with it,” he reflects. “Because when I first got in, I was like, ‘I don’t know none of you motherfuckers.’ I would smile and laugh, but I was so nervous, like, ‘I don’t know what the fuck’s going on!’”
Vulnerability, especially for someone raised to view it as weakness, didn’t come easy.
“I was taught that being vulnerable as a man is dangerous when I was a kid,” he shares. “That’s why, on wax, especially in the beginning, I might have been more exaggerated.”
Over time, that act got heavier to carry.
“On I LAY DOWN MY LIFE…, I kind of dropped the guard, like, ‘Let me talk real.’ From henceforth, I’ve kind of changed the way I look at life and what I’m going to say on record. Because the least shocking thing you can do in 2025 is go outside, butt-naked and do a front-flip. It’s like, okay, cool, that’s interesting for three seconds. But a motherfucker telling the truth? Uh-oh!”
He even made a track called I Recovered From This (sample lyric: ‘One hour a week ain’t enough for me, I think I need a friend’), something he admits he never would have done before.
“I’ve always been like, ‘Oh, it’s not cool to talk about your real feelings,’” he confesses. “But now, I see it’s actually the bravest shit to do.”
That’s growth, artistically and personally.
“Maybe I’m not this mature yet,” he adds, “but it actually is really strong to let shit go. You are stronger for doing that. Letting shit sit and fester in you will fuck you up. I just know that because I’m older now. When I was like 21, you couldn’t have told me that shit.”
“The least shocking thing you can do in 2025 is go outside, butt-naked and do a front-flip. But a motherfucker telling the truth? Uh-oh!”
In a world that doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense, maybe this new chapter for JPEG does. His shift towards alternative and heavy music spaces isn’t some half-assed marketing pivot, it’s a return to his roots. The genre-splicing catharsis and freedom that rock has always championed mirrors his own journey in hip-hop. Now he’s ready to swim out and see where fresh waters take him.
“Traditional hip-hop spaces are closed-minded,” he says bluntly. “Hip-hop is damn near a conservative genre now. I’m anchored in hip-hop – just like Linkin Park is anchored in rock – but I’m pulling from everything else. So, I’ve become isolated. I’m on an island of my own. I’m a pillar by myself and I’m ready to build a whole fucking village around it”.
At a time when genre seems increasingly meaningless and flux is the cultural default, Peggy feels necessary. He’s the glitch in the Matrix, rapping over loops and abrasive distortion, channelling fury into freedom and meaningful connection. Just like the band that soundtracked his adolescence, Peggy’s strength lies in not being bound by tradition. He’s creating new ones.
“When you do something new, something weird, you gotta go through me, motherfucker,” he asserts. “All these people sit around and they do the same thing every day. They rap on the same beats, they have the same features. And I’m the only one out here actually trying to push the genre forward.”
But why is this shift gaining momentum now? Why are live bills being shared by rock and hip-hop artists much more frequently these days?
“Shit, it’s evolution, man,” he says with a shrug. “Especially now with the internet, we have so much information available. It was inevitable. People want new, weird shit because we’re so desensitised to everything. In 2025, nothing’s off the table. Societally, it was bound to happen.”
That’s an attitude Linkin Park fans can expect from his live shows, too.
“This isn’t a Drake concert,” he reassures anyone uninitiated. “You don’t have to look a certain way or make a certain amount of money. This isn’t the cool kid’s table; there’s no elites here. You can be weird. It’s fine.”
He gets it, because he’s lived it. Now, more than ever, he wants to be that outlet for someone else.
“If I’m that for any kid or any person, I love that,” he smiles. “I want to be the safe space. The weird space. I want people to feel like, ‘Yo, this guy makes a product we can only get here.’ I want to be the alternative.”
That’s why 2025 is the perfect moment for JPEGMAFIA. Barriers are breaking down. Old rules are being rewritten. Peggy’s built his house from the wreckage of the rubble.
Kick off your shoes as you make your way in. Everybody’s welcome.
I LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR YOU is out now. JPEGMAFIA supports Linkin Park at Wembley Stadium on June 28 – get your tickets now.
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