u/Lazy_Board8218

He outmaneuvered ya'll musically and it'll take a month for ya'll to come crawling back.

So let me start by saying that I'm a longtime peggy fan. My 3 favorite projects of his are the 2nd Amendment, Veteran, and AMHAC. I'm not saying this because I think the two were ever similar or comparable, but Death Grips is my favorite band of all time because I love loud industrial music. Because of that I'm a big fan of Peggy's 2 (now 3 with E.R.) most industrial albums (Veteran and 2nd Amendment). AMHAC is prolly his all around best album with how it blends the more melodic aspects of his music with the industrial and harsh. The thing is about Peggy's music on every project from BBC up until AMHAC he truly made shit where I was thinking "how in the fuck did he even think of this shit?" and that's exactly what made me fall in love with his music.

With the release of OFFLINE I definitely enjoyed it, I think its a very competent execution of cloud rap and R n' B, but I couldn't help but feel like something was missing. Rather than drenching the beautiful melodies in a cloud like ambience like in his Devon work or subverting those melodic elements with harsh industrial noise he just made somewhat conventional melodic production that was a little bit off-kilter. His music with that album started to become a more conventional, a more "polished" version of the kind of music he was making before. STH had a little bit more of that "WTF did I just listen to" energy, but on the whole it was just really hard hitting boom bap, and this all came to a head with ILDMLFY his most conventional (but very well made) album to date. ILDMLFY was basically just very competently integrated conventional boom bap and conventional nu-metal with some of Peggy's production eccentricities thrown in there. This isn't a diss of any of these 3 projects. I think they're all solid 8/10s and I love the musical progression on the Directors cut of ILDMLFY especially, but I definitely feel a lot less of that "this music is fucking my brain in a good way" spark on these 3 projects and that's precisely because they're more conventional than his older work.

Experimental Rap was the first time since AMHAC where I felt that spark again. Peggy had grown a lot as a producer by the time ILDMLFY was about to drop and the thing I wanted most from that album was for him to go back to making super off kilter production like he did from BBC to AMHAC, but to use what he learned on OFFLINE and STH to make it more cinematic, to give it more progression. In that way Experimental Rap ended up being exactly what I wanted ILDMLFY to be. That is to integrate the Avant-garde musical progression shit with the down and dirty psychotic-ness of his old production. That's what we got here.

Now let me address the clickbait-y title. In what way do I think he "outmaneuvered ya'll". Well the major criticism I keep seeing is the whole "his flow is so god damn repetitive; I hate the triplets. Where are the melodies? I want the melodies!" Let's address the flows. On one hand I think ya'll don't have ears cause he maybe uses the triplet flow on like a quarter of the songs on this album. Ya'll are right about one thing though. He's rapping differently on this record from how he normally would and its interacting with his production in a very different way.

Specifically, he is consistently rapping faster and with more conventional rhythm than he normally would. (that said he is NOT spamming triplets. I think the only real reason people are spamming that criticism is cause they heard the triplet flow somewhat prominently on the 3 lead singles, so they let that cloud their judgement going into the album). In his previous work the beats would lay down the structure of the track and through either a punky, yelling delivery, or a melodic one he complement that structure and he would mix the vocals differently, often from line to line, to make sure they really did compliment the part of the beat they were interacting with. In this album, and this is the element that I think really helped it be his most experimental since AMHAC, he completely turned that relation on its head. Here he uses more conventional rap flows (ones that are the "best" he's done so far in a purely technical sense) because he's using his vocals as the rhythmic and percussive element that gives the music structure. I noticed I was consistently bopping my head more to the rhythm of his vocals than the beats himself and that's because the production on this album was simultaneously a lot more harsh, noisey, but also a lot more spacey than his previous work. His vocals are the structure of the production on this album, and I think that's what you guys are missing.

In a weird way there were moments on this album that actually reminded me of Death Grips' album Government Plates. Not sonically, but in terms of the musical techniques. On that project a lot of instrumentals (while weird, industrial, and harsh) were also floatier and it was Ride's vocals that really gave everything structure. He's done a similar thing on this project while still keeping it more hip hop than electronic (cause GP is basically an electronic album).

Also a lot of ya'll saying that it "just sounds like ILDMLFY 2 cause guitars" might've just started listening to music literally 2 days ago cause the way he uses metal guitars on this project sounds wildly different. On ILDMLFY he mainly just had beat switches from boom bap into conventional sounding Nu-Metal. On this project the transition is more seamless because he's not switching genres mid-song, but rather he builds up a vast industrial soundscape that a guitar then enters into at some point and with a lot more distortion and messier production techniques integrated with it. The guitars on ILDMLFY sounded too clean to be paired with a lot of the beats they were paired with. Here I think they're much better integrated.

On the whole I would give this album like a 9/10 and I think in due time a lot more of you will as well. It may even be in my top 3 among (but prolly a little below) Veteran and AMHAC someday. Anyway I hope you cornballs enjoy the album or at least something in your life.

Banished was prolly one of my least favorite doom tracks for a minute. At first it felt like he was struggling to keep up with the beat, but it’s been like a year and a half since I’ve listened to DOOM and I came back and listened to key to the cuffs today after having listened to a lot more experimental music and general and he’s actually doing something really fucking interesting on that track. He’s like doing a counter-rhythm it’s not purely just rapping over a beat like how he normally would. It’s more like his flow is one of the instruments in there. I would’ve loved to hear him do a louder sound more consistently for an album.

Doing so made me realize just how much this dude’s lyricism has degenerated. He was never an MF DOOM or a Nas or whatever, but there is genuine storytelling on every track on this album. Even if it isn’t particular meaningful there’s at least one major theme he’s alluding to on track and there are definitely a few standout tracks with great storytelling (e.g: just killed a cop now I’m horny, 27 club, title track, CUCK, Try me, etc.). Like there are genuine bars on this shit. I feel like he’s slowly been moving toward just filling space with meaningless lyrics rather than rapping with a purpose and it felt especially apparently on at least half of ILDMLFY despite how great that project was (after the directors cut). BBC is also far more experimental than anything he’s made since AMHAC. If he really wants to claim to be the king of “Experimental” RAP he better bring some fucking bars with substance and the groundbreaking production he used to bring consistently. I want to see this dude prove himself.