Tempered Rebellion in We Live in a Society

Hip-hop agitator and zeitgeist-disruptor JPEGMAFIA’s (a.k.a Peggy) music has always been characterized by raw, multi-genre Frankensteins of instrumentation and anti-establishment raps. In his Extended Play (EP) We Live in a Society (2025)—a collection of tracks from 2023 studio sessions with Australian electronic producer Flume—Peggy pivots from these motifs by working within the bounds of another producer’s style. 

The EP’s cover is a stock image of a black hand (Peggy) shaking a white one (Flume)—clearly Peggy’s design, given his history of sardonic, sociopolitically charged album art. In an analysis on his personal YouTube channel, State University of New York (SUNY) Brockport French professor and part-time music critic, Skye Paine, posits that the cover represents metamodernist oscillation. He interprets the image as a pendulum, swinging between the surface-level humor evoked by a Black producer collaborating with a white one and an homage to Flume’s merit. He’s such an artistic powerhouse that Peggy has let him through the doors of hip-hop—an intrinsically, sacredly Black genre that, in Peggy’s view, has been invaded by white culture vultures. But Flume’s style dominates; Peggy welcomes Flume into his genre under the guise of collaboration but lets Flume’s style overpower his, hurting his long-standing ethos as the man who so famously “took hip-hop hostage” in 2016.

“Track 1” sonically materializes Paine’s pendulum by justifying Flume’s place in the EP; it’s two artists in literal conversation with each other—a skit where Flume and Peggy mess around on their Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) together, try out different sounds, and deliberate on the music. Flume starts with an industrial, distorted synth, but Peggy tells him to “keep it simple,” so the distortion stops. The producers start a clap beat and, almost immediately after, Flume brings back the original synth, now accompanied by an 808. Peggy repeats, “I like that,” but immediately changes his mind, telling Flume, “I lied on wax to make you feel better.”  He raps to Flume, “This the same [EXPLETIVE] beat as the last one you played / Dog, how the [EXPLETIVE] you get paid? / Ayy, play something else today.” Peggy’s pendulum moves from light humor (he’s giggling the entire time; eventually, he calls Flume “big daddy”) to deep-rooted dedication to his craft. Peggy is being funny, but he’s also keeping Flume in check, playing into the role of some kind of rap game Terence Fletcher. If Flume wants to honor Peggy’s invitation and create within hip-hop, he needs to transcend—he can’t compose mediocrely and derivatively.

Flume then implements gnarly synths and more bass, but Peggy keeps disparaging his work (“Damn, that's not that good either / I'm not gon' lie, I will not lie to you, man / You are a white man, and I will tell you the truth”). This back-and-forth continues as Flume throws in more unorthodox sounds, like the bass-boosted, subhuman moaning vocals Peggy calls “spooky [EXPLETIVE] clown [EXPLETIVE] music.” Eventually, Flume starts using a vocal warble resembling an elephant’s trumpet, earning Peggy’s approval (he asks Flume, “You must've had your Vegemite this morning, didn't you?”). After successive claps, the track’s instrumental soars, and the dialogue stops. Flume’s first, distorted synth returns, supplemented by a beeping lead, an 808, a clap beat, and a vocal sample from NEFFEX’s “How’s It Supposed to Feel.” The distortion gradually increases in pitch to accentuate the sample’s melody before stopping. A calm, droning pad replaces the distortion before it returns for one last short burst. The clap, pad (now echoing), and sample then fade out.

 Ironically, the sounds Peggy rejects in the skit are more characteristic of his own style than Flume’s; the distortion Flume starts with sounds straight out of Peggy’s own Veteran (2018). By the end of “Track 1,” Peggy embraces high-energy, heavy synths—a motif that he’s used before, but that is more aligned with Flume’s sound. As much as Peggy presents himself as this unforgiving hip-hop gatekeeper, “Track 1” promises that the EP will draw just as much from Flume’s artistry as Peggy’s own. In adopting Flume’s sound, he’s acknowledging the legitimacy of Flume’s place in hip-hop and recognizing Flume’s artistic transcendence, something he started the track challenging. Peggy keeps that promise in the rest of the EP, where the harsh distortion is subdued; Peggy’s snappy, provocative raps are dialed down, replaced by smooth, permeating, melodious synths. In “Is It Real,” an optimistic, high-pitched lead tremolos as Peggy—his voice autotuned, loud, and airy—repeats “Now tell me, is it real? / (Uh) Tell me how it feel.” Besides that hook, he doesn’t rap at all; the track’s dominating vocal content is a soft, poppy verse from Ravyn Lenae. It’s energetic, futuristic synth pop, and Peggy’s supporting vocals buttress that quality, a deviation from his typical, anarchic approach to music. Still, the track starts with a quick accordion melody before jumping into the synths; Peggy’s trademark eclecticism is still there, even if Flume appears to be taking the reins.

In “AI Girlfriend,” Peggy continues to play with Flume’s sound, but his reliance on the other musician grows excessive. The track’s title invokes the sarcastic internet humor archetypal for Peggy’s discography, but Flume’s fingerprints override Peggy’s. Peggy switches between staccato raps and fluid singing alongside a calm, lo-fi pad and light, steady drums. Then, a staggering, EDM bass synth erupts as Peggy repeatedly sings, autotuned, “my AI girlfriend.” It’s more of the catchy pop in “Is It Real”, continuing the EP’s pattern of loud, powerful synths. But that repetition makes it the project’s least artistically developed track. “AI Girlfriend” is a rehash of the pathos found in “Is It Real” without presenting any new motifs. Peggy’s “AI girlfriend” diction, an attempt to appeal to fans of his offbeat, internet-derivative bars, mostly consists of tame puns (“Two-factor authentication, I'm savin' you”) that lack the edge, creativity, and political complexities that give his lyrics notoriety. The track presents itself as being imbued with Peggy’s flair, but it isn’t; Peggy’s contributions disappointingly lack substance. 

The EP’s closer, “The Ocean is Fake,” finally breaks from the extravagant pop of the project’s middle portion. Peggy and Flume tap into airy cloud rap, a departure from the high-octave synths of the previous tracks. Kicks and hi-hats beat on; a dreamy, aqueous pad sampled from Vegyn and Headache’s “Miss Understood” (2023) echoes. Meanwhile, Flume sings in the background—his voice distorted, matching the sample’s haze. Eventually, Peggy engages in a short dialogue with Flume, similar to “Track 1” (“Did you—, did it catch that? (Huh?) / Did it get that? (Yeah) / Alright, lemme hear, lemme hear that back), launching a full-on rap verse—his first in the project. His lyrics are similar to the angsty bars in his last album, I LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR YOU (2024). As Flume continues to melodize, Peggy pessimistically muses on his precarious love life: raps like “shoutout all my mistresses / She keep on callin' and callin', callin', then callin' it” and “you keep on cappin' with it, girl, I gotta restore the feelin'.” The raps create melancholy, emotional authenticity from Peggy that the rest of the project is devoid of. As a glassy, glitchy lead plays supplemented by mild distortion, Peggy declares “[EXPLETIVE], the ocean is fake,” repeating the phrase in between Flume’s vocals. While Flume permeated “AI Girlfriend” and “Is it Real,” “The Ocean is Fake” is a realization of the promise of the EP’s cover and the skit in “Track 1”—a synthesis of Peggy and Flume’s styles. Flume’s synths are there, but the “Miss Understood” sample, Peggy’s raps, snappy drums, and even Flume’s offbeat vocals create a sound evoking a crispier rendition of the distorted, glitch-hop from Peggy’s The Ghost Pop Tape (2013), one of his first albums. It’s a triumphant, soothing ending to an EP otherwise overwhelmed by Flume’s presence, solidifying Peggy’s place in the project. 

In We Live in a Society’s Bandcamp description, Peggy asserts, “People looking for drug rap and bravado will be disappointed here.” He’s speaking to the EP’s rejection of the hip-hop conventions he hates—but at what point does a rejection of those conventions become a rejection of the genre itself? The EP is shaped by a DuBoisian double consciousness—the feelings of self-deprecation Peggy revealed in I LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR YOU. Peggy, despite his cockiness, the image he projects of himself as a rap music firebrand and provocateur, concedes the direction of We Live in a Society to a white man, Flume—perhaps an implicit reaction to the criticism he has faced online for his aggressiveness, the so-called immaturity of his anarcho-communist bars, and the hatred of white people he espouses on X—criticisms he spent I LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR YOU trying to reject and transcend. Even Peggy admits that he enjoyed “following Flume’s directions lyrically and having fun with his carefree theme,” but that’s not how he portrayed it in “Track 1,” where he was Flume’s regulator, hip-hop’s judge, jury, and executioner. We Live in a Society has sonically powerful tracks and fun production, but it also sounds conciliatory; JPEGMAFIA, the rapper who once sought “to take hip-hop out the Drake era,” is supposed to be anything but.