Jpeg Mafia and Danny Brown - Scaring the Hoes - Vinyl LP

JPEGMAFIA and Danny Brown are easy first-round picks for this category — craft-first eccentrics with singular catalogs that demand some recalibration of the ear. But on their new collaboration, it's clear the two rappers see that innocuous plea to simply let the Rap Caviar playlist run as something more sinister: a capitulation to homogenous, mass-produced music, fodder for revelers who couldn't begin to care about the form. Their mission is laid out flat on Scaring the Hoes' title track, with Brown pantomiming the breathless exploitations of a money-grubbing music executive: "Said it ain't about the bars 'cause it's all about the brand / Say it ain't about the art, 'cause it's all about the fans / Give a f*** about a fan, put the money in my hand." In response, the pair of MCs agree to embrace the pejorative as a challenge, delivering a hyperactive album that is as gratifying as it is overloaded, a truly jarring and yet refreshingly in-your-face display of restorative rap that refuses to go unheard.