JPEGMAFIA at One Strange Night in Orange County festival, July 2023.
Barrington DeVaughn Hendricks, known professionally as JPEGMAFIA, has become an idol in the experimental hip-hop world. He uses his personal experiences of abuse, racism, and loneliness to create music as both a producer and a rapper. Hendricks began his career during a military stay in Japan under a name similar to his birth name, Devon Hendryx - reflecting his personal, vulnerable lyrics. He joined the military at 18-years-old to escape his responsibilities at home, and was honorably discharged for speaking out against his superiors, shaping his disruptive musical tendencies. As a small independent artist at the time, he was introduced to the underground scene that comprised cloud rap and vaporwave - genres that use dream-like digital nostalgia and reverb to create a unique sound. These initial experiments acted as a trial run for the cutting-edge style that would later become synonymous with JPEGMAFIA.
As JPEGMAFIA, Hendricks pushes musical and political barriers. He criticizes both right-wing extremists, as well as mainstream liberal “woke” ideologies, generally considering himself anti-establishment. His unprecedented approach to music production creates a beautiful chaos of glitchy electronic sounds, trap beats, and rap noise. Critics have praised JPEG’s popular albums like “Veterans” and “SCARING THE HOES” for his ironic take on hip-hop, criticizing other rappers - as well as the genre - through the use of popular tropes and humorous archetypes.
His identities - JPEGMAFIA and Devon Hendryx - signify two sides of the same artist. Hendricks dives into the profound themes of his mental rock bottom and social disconnection with the aid of misty, otherworldly sounds. In the opposite direction, JPEG is all about confrontation, rage, and rebellion, deploying distortion and hostile sounds as his means of expression. The two dimensions together unmask the whole spectrum of Hendricks' creativity. One can still hear the softer side of the cloud rap trailblazer in JPEG's production, which is evidence of the inseparability of his artistic journey on both sides.