Your ex-situationship with a septum piercing and baggy shorts who probably ghosted you just had a really, really, good week. Bladee dropped an album May 20, JPEGMAFIA dropped May 21 and fakemink dropped May 22. Each of these albums have polarized fans in their own ways, and it all has me thinking about the celebrity personas and performances artists engage in to promote their music.

Early into JPEGMAFIA’s rollout for his project EXPERIMENTAL RAP, he started pushing people’s buttons. In a dramatic interview, JPEG, clad in villainous leather with masked henchmen standing behind him, explained that the album’s title was a way for him to “lay claim to something [he] already [has]” because “there’s no one who competes with [him].” He is “already the best in this space of experimental rap.” 

A comment with nearly 10,000 likes on the interview clip simply names one of JPEG’s previous albums: “all my heroes are cornballs.” Maybe he predicted himself. 

This interview caught attention because JPEG added a dig at Earl Sweatshirt’s recent collab with Surf Gang, mocking rappers who “try to be cool” and “want to make songs that the young people make” because they are having a “midlife crisis, musically.” 

Earl Sweatshirt commented, “lmao leave me alone pls i make music with my Friends that i have (derogatory).” The feud between the two alternative hip-hop mainstays is Kendrick and Drake for people who use Letterboxd and say things like “yeah, I prefer Death Grip’s unreleased stuff,” although unfortunately neither artist actually dropped a diss track. 

All of this primed a lot of people to hate EXPERIMENTAL RAP before they’d ever heard it. If you talk a big game about being the king of a genre and antagonize other artists, you raise people’s standards for your own work. For a project titled the way it is, many of the songs on here would’ve fit right in on JPEG’s last album. It’s a lot of the same distorted rock sample beats, antagonistic bars and rapid flow. 

Don’t get me wrong, this album sounds like his last, but his last sounds incredible. He’s kind of right when he says nobody else can produce and rap like him. But I wanted something I hadn’t already heard so much of.

The album does feature some seriously beautiful and ornate production. In the song “Lights,” JPEG samples the beat from Ye’s “All of the Lights” and creates a fuzzy, groovy, whirling soundscape of synths out of those classic horns. The track “¥ (Yen)” is impressively heavy, and its looping, pitched-down vocal sample fits perfectly with the simple beeping synth line. These are a few of the tracks where he plays with EDM and electronic music alongside rock and metal in terms of production, and it’s for the better. The chopped-up vocals, acoustic guitar and intense drumming on “Burning Hammer” blew me away on a first listen as well. But most of the songs on the album could’ve been on either of his last few projects. 

I wanted something less homogenous, something with the extreme variety of his earlier work, like Veteran. JPEG is a versatile artist, but he doesn’t showcase that here. His comments, flooded with hate, read “maybe try experimenting with the flow next time,” because he really does have a nearly identical one on a lot of these songs. I miss when JPEG would use autotune, when he would sing, when he would scream. This is a good album, and you should listen to it. I just know that JPEGMAFIA has it in him to release a great album. 

A similar dynamic has played out with fakemink’s Terrified. This is his first full-length album since his meteoric rise to fame, a pressure he recognizes on the second track, appropriately titled “All Eyes On Me.” This album is his chance to cement his place in the hiphop landscape. 

That’s the lens through which I interpret the album’s title: he is terrified of all the pressure on him, terrified of fame, of his new life. 

fakemink has had a similarly cocky album rollout to JPEGMAFIA. Before the album dropped, he stated, “it’s gonna sound super weird to people, but it will take time,” because he is “making music that is ahead of trends.” In another interview, he says “I’m better than everybody” in the UK underground scene. In a third interview with Apple Music he says, “the people in the UK that look up to me are going to listen to this album and be like ‘holy shit, we need to step our game up.’” To fakemink, this album will help define and push forward underground hiphop. 

 Terrified. faced high expectations on release because of fakemink’s rhetoric. Fans are pretty split, some agreeing with fakemink himself that this is truly a generational project, others saying it sounds muddy, abrasive or lacking in variety. Pitchfork gave it a 6.3, calling it “monotonous.” The entire album utilizes a pitched-up, fuzzy vocal preset for mink, which has fans divided, with some hilariously noting that it  “makes him sound like a swarm of bees.”  

fakemink is mostly right about the merit of his work. This album is incredible and features some of his best songs yet. The production (done by fakemink himself) is dialed in, with each track hitting hard. There’s “51 Ttashpel Pony Ave,” whose buzzing 808s are perfectly complemented by smooth and haunting female vocals. fakemink’s dissonant melodies work wonders. The whole sound of the project, digital, chaotic, heavy and dazed, comes together to suit his vocals perfectly. This is epitomized on “R— Angel,” a noisy, atmospheric track with driving bass, spacy synths, warped static and heavy drums. There’s so much detail put into the beat, so many layers that come perfectly together. 

fakemink is also at his best lyrically here, reflecting on a passionate yet toxic connection with bars like “your kiss really felt like absolving my sins / miss the scent of your sweat laying skin to skin,” and “I borrow tomorrow, that’s the way I must live / burn incense of guilt in a room that forgives.” Another standout is “Like A Virgin,” with punchy percussion and  an aggressive flow. This track has a lot of great contrast, with some of the fuzz and noise of the first half giving way into a clean, icy and cinematic closing. 

This album has a very consistent tone and sound, so I understand why people call it homogenous. To me, it’s focused, each song executed with intention. fakemink’s production style on the album suits his flow and vocal inflection perfectly. It all comes together to create an immensely fun, catchy, reflective and intense sophomore album. 

Sulfur Surfer is by far the most lyrically unique of these three albums. Bladee is in his esoteric bag on the first and titular track, talking about “declar[ing] war on the Evil Star,” being “the upholder of divine law,” as his “vessel embodies the saint.” I eat this stuff up. While Bladee is not immune from flexing clothes, money or drugs, I like his willingness to create or at least reference a sense of mythology and personal spirituality in his work. 

Another stand out, “Versailles Flow,” starts with a stylistically strained, upper register vocal performance and super catchy flow. I love how the song builds as Bladee delivers the second verse with a low, almost whispered voice before a climax featuring what sounds like a ghostly children’s choir. 

Bladee hasn’t released an album since 2024’s Cold Visions, a project full of references to Bladee’s past projects and vulnerable self-reflection. It was a project that showcased Bladee’s strengths as a rapper, as he reunited with producers like F1lthy to give his take on rage hiphop. Basically, it’s a hard act to follow. 

Bladee, just like fakemink and JPEGMAFIA, has divided fans with his new work. Some fans call it “sad Bladee at his best,” defining his new sound, with others saying it’s “tied for his worst album.” It’s pretty rare for one Bladee album to sound like the last. His fanbase is full of split opinions, and appreciation for the artist’s refusal to play it safe. 

It’s worth noting that Bladee is the only artist of the three reviewed who doesn’t seem interested in policing what people think about his album. 

JPEGMAFIA and fakemink should stop trying to tell us how impressive their work is and let the work prove itself. Who knows how either of these projects will age? Will they experience a total reversal in public opinion like Carti’s Whole Lotta Red, the way people already speculate that they will? Only time will truly tell. 

While fakemink and JPEGMAFIA seem to need everyone else to agree that their new work reigns supreme, Bladee seems the most dedicated to artistry and personal expression for its own sake, having weathered disappointed fans numerous times before. A lot of artists, especially famous ones, could learn from that. 

The title of track 18 on fakemink’s “Terrified.” includes a slur that was censored by the editorial board of The Spectator.