Over a 25-track sprawl, the definitive heretical hip-hop statement from the restless MC. The title of JPEGMAFIA’s sixth album, EXPERIMENTAL RAP, is so self-evident, it practically scans as a joke—after all, has this dude ever made anything else? The LA-via-Baltimore maverick has always dared you to keep with him, be it his whiplashing news-ticker flows or his chaotic, short-attention-spanned approach to sound design. But with its overwhelming 25-track sprawl, EXPERIMENTAL RAP was conceived as his definitive thesis statement on the form, with each track a case study in how far he can push the sonic parameters of hip-hop while still staying true to the genre’s fundamentals. On “Burning Hammer”, that means cycling through battering-ram hardcore drums, flamenco guitars, glitchy electronics, trap beats and grungy rock grooves as if he were zipping through different levels of a video game. On “The Ghost of Emmett Till”, his staccato rhymes surf atop murderous funk-metal riffs. And while “War Over Land” initially appears as a tranquil, New Agey instrumental, JPEG’s irrepressible energy on the mic eventually whips the track into a tsunami-sized surge of gospel grandeur and demonic shredding, as if he were staging a boss-level showdown between God and the Devil. Pro tip: Listen to EXPERIMENTAL RAP with the repeat function activated, as the closing snippet of sampled dialogue seamlessly connects to the very first words we hear on the record—and given this album’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it barrage of sounds, you’ll be grateful to have another opportunity to take it all in again.