I Interviewed JPEGMafia and We Didn’t Talk About Music At All

Riddle me this: A pair of VICE staffers and a musician walk into a Miami Beach dive bar that allows smoking indoors. Who’s the most excited? 

That bar, Mac’s Club Deuce, is where I met JPEGMafia, the rapper and producer more casually known as Peggy. He arrived a few minutes late in a black mesh vest, a black and red leather jacket decorated with symbols of Americana—a flag here, an eagle there—and one of the dangliest earrings I’ve ever seen. It was a look that, five years ago, would have easily outed him as an artist. But at Mac’s, a staple of Miami nightlife history, in the middle of Art Basel Miami 2022, Peggy seemed more like the “normal 30-year-old man” he described himself as.

That might be surprising since his music is known for being abrasive and confrontational (for proof, see Peggy climbing down and into the audience at his VICE x Art Basel performance). Tracks with titles like “i just killed a cop now i’m horny” or “Jesus Forgive Me, I Am A Thot” certainly err on the side of provocation. But in conversation, he really was a regular guy. Maybe even a little better: He was down to earth, quick to laugh, and asked more reciprocal questions than most of the people I talk to on a regular basis.

Against a backdrop of some of the cooler neon signs I’ve ever seen in a bar, Peggy and I talked about reality TV, pumpkin spice lattes, and the truth about JFK’s assassination. I guess we’re pretty normal, after all.

VICE: Are you in Miami a lot?

JPEGMafia: I don't really come to Miami that often—when I do, it’s for work. And every time I come here: very strange vibes. Not in a bad way, but it feels like Texas and LA put together. Florida in general is kind of scary to me because I feel like it's full of a bunch of me's, and I don't want to be around that.

How do you mean?

I'll put it this way: I think the rep that Florida gets is one of having a lot of degenerate people. I like degenerate people because they're often very honest, as opposed to people you think are “good” people.

Have you been to Art Basel before?

I've never been to Art Basel in my life. I gotta do a panel tomorrow and then after that, I'm gonna go check out Basel, see what it's about. I have no clue. I watched one video—I typed in “Art Basel Miami” in YouTube, and I saw one video and it was like some ASMR shit. It was just people walking around and like ambient music. So, I didn't get any information from that shit, no context, nothing. Are you from here? 

No, I live in Brooklyn. 

Oh, you’re from Brooklyn! Where do you live in Brooklyn?

I’m actually from Virginia, but right now I’m in Boerum Hill—it’s like, not a real neighborhood. 

I was about to say, where the fuck is that, I’ve never heard of that!

I’m by the Barclays Center. 

Yeah, gotcha. I was born in Flatbush. You like Brooklyn? Why the hell do you like Brooklyn?

[laughs] I love New York! 

I was born in New York and I hate on New York all the time. But I actually like New York. I went back there recently and I gotta tell you, New York with weed is way the fuck better than without it, you know what I mean? I fuck with New York now. When there was no weed there, I was just kind of pissed all the time. 

It is crazy how openly it’s being sold right now, you can walk into a store and buy it. It’s not technically legal yet, but everyone’s doing it anyway.

Yeah, I went to a bodega and the guy tried to sell it to me in the bodega, to which I was like, “This feels shady… this feels wrong.” And I buy drugs all the time! I felt like telling him, “Maybe you shouldn't be doing this, bro.” 

So you live in New York, and you're down here for work. You like VICE? Are you the big boss?

I am the opposite of the boss. [laughs] I love journalism, and I love getting to do cool shit like this. And I like that VICE allows its reporters to express themselves on a political level, which is important—so many other outlets won’t let you say shit for what amounts to like, brand safety reasons. 

I get that. I see it. When I'm on my burner account on Twitter, I always see all the official brand accounts tweet like we're best friends or something. “What's up, bro? Gotta go to Wendy's today,” tweeted from Wendy's. And I'm just like, I see what's going on. But it's better than being all sterile and shit online all the time. If I wasn't doing music, I'm sure these companies would be reaching out to me to do some damn social networking shit.

I have to have a burner account. Otherwise, I can get in so much trouble saying my actual thoughts online. Back in the day, when I used to go off on Twitter or something, I'd be like, fuck, I feel really bad. But now I realized that, like, people like that shit! It's like a marketing thing to weaponize “the truth.” Like, “Oh shit, keep playing with me and I'm gonna tell you the truth.” But yeah, it doesn't make me feel good to say some of my real thoughts on my real account. It's different if I was anonymous, but when I have a personality and you can attach a face to it, it's weird when you're just like, “Fuck Joe Biden!” or whatever.

Yeah, I have a burner account too, and I’m not even a real public figure. 

You stalking your ex? 

I stalk everybody. I’m stalking my exes’ exes. 

Oh yeah, that’s always fun. I stalked my ex recently, and it was just weird, ‘cuz I'm looking and I'm like, “I’m so fucking pissed that you're talking shit about me, or what you're saying here might be can be applied to me, but I can't say anything because I'm not supposed to be seeing this. So, fuck you, but in private!”

How many people follow your burner Twitter?

Nobody! I don't comment. I don't say anything. I'm not that type of person. I don't like to interact with the heathens. I just like to look into what they're doing. [laughs] But yeah, I don't need to talk to anybody. I feel like anything I would have to say in private, some teenager somewhere has already said it in some other way. I just like to observe—I'm a very much observant person.

Besides stalking your ex, what are you into right now? Are you reading anything, watching anything, listening to anything?

Right now, what I’m into in general? Wednesday. I like that show, it’s fun. I feel like I'm not supposed to be watching it, but I like it anyway, I like the aesthetic, how it looks. To be honest with you, I'm trying to be normal right now. I spent the whole year touring and doing weird shit all year. So I'm at home trying to do normal regular-ass shit. I'm just watching TV and trying to be a regular 30-year-old man, really. And then, basically, I store up all this normal energy so I can go back out in the world and be weird as shit and not feel insecure about it. I'm just doing 30-year-old shit: running errands, being normal. I got my glasses the other day, I got scheduled for LASIK—shit that I should have been doing. It’s really boring. It’s good. 

Are you scared to get LASIK? The lasers freak me out. 

Hell nah! I watch Keeping Up With the Kardashians, so I’ve seen what happens already. They zap, boop boop, real quick. Kim Kardashian, that’s one of my biggest inspirations, by the way.

For LASIK, or in general?

Oh, in general. Kim Kardashian, she's a lawyer. She passed the fucking bar exam. Watching that show, it helps me learn so many things. And also—damn, I can just say whatever on here?

Yeah, of course. 

Kim Kardashian is incredible. People hate on her because they say she fucked somebody on camera or she sucked dick on camera—half these bitches out here and half these niggas suck dick on camera for free, and they can't pay for bus fare to get to work. It’s just hating! She took people's curiosity and their stupidity and made it into an empire. I think that's fucking fire. I wish I could be like that. But yeah, I’ve seen LASIK already on Keeping Up With the Kardashians—she got me here! I want to do that shit so I can see. I can't see shit right now.

Do you wear glasses now?

No, I went blind—nah, I can see, I just can’t read from afar. I started losing my eyesight when I was like a teenager, because I've been producing for so long. I'm looking at screens all day, and I don't be using that little blue light shit.

I kinda think those are fake, to be honest. 

The blue light shit? I think so too, because I used to wear them all the time and my eyesight is getting worse. [He asks his manager when his girlfriend will arrive.] Trying to get my fucking girl here. I was just trying to coordinate that shit and not interrupt the interview. She’s coming from LA, she had something to do so she’s coming a little later. You know what I’m saying: fly my girl out to me, come to this bar, sip some Miller High Life. 

How long have y'all been together?

A long time. A long time. I bring her all the time on tour. And if I don't, we just stay in contact. It's difficult, but it's just like anything—if you really care about somebody, you'll figure it out. If you just don't give a fuck about a motherfucker, then the excuses come out. I love her a lot. She keeps me very grounded and normal. My bad, I feel like I’m rambling! Do you watch football?

You know what, I would like to be able to say yes. It would be so much cooler if I could say yes.

Hey, I don't watch football. I watched it recently because they were like, “America is gonna win.” I'm like, “What? Let's gooooo! Soccer!” [laughs] But yeah, I respect it.

Right, a little moment of patriotism. Do you watch the Olympics? 

A little bit, but I don't really watch it like that. I used to be really into sports when I was younger. I used to play basketball and football, and into sports in general. I watched everything: hockey, baseball, football, basketball, whatever. I stopped watching sports for a long time because I was just focused on work, but I’ve been getting back into basketball and football. I don't have a team in basketball, I just like players, and in football, I guess it’s… the Giants? But really, the only thing I really care about is Tom Brady's personal life. I'm like, shit, he got divorced and he's still gonna play? What is that like, mentally?

Oooh, yeah! It's not quite a conspiracy theory, but people are saying that he and Gisele Bündchen split up because they were involved in a crypto company that went bad and they’re trying to protect their assets. 

I believe it, I believe it because—what race are you? Are you white?

I’m Asian and white, yeah. 

So I believe it, because honestly, white people are crazy like that, right? Especially rich ass white people. They do shit like that and make it look like they didn’t. I’ve literally seen it happen. So I'm just like, I wouldn't put it past ‘em. Of course, I don't know, and I have no proof—I’m just hearing it from you. But like, I wouldn't put it past them. White people do crazy shit all the time. Broke-ass white people do crazy shit! White people with money are like a different level of demented when it comes to crazy shit. I believe it! Is that your favorite conspiracy theory? What's your favorite conspiracy theory? 

My favorite conspiracy theory is that we did land on the moon but the footage is fake.

Yeah, I hear that a lot from people.

That one’s just benign. I think it’s fun. 

Yeah, but let me ask you something… for me, I'm just like, if we didn't land on the moon… What now? It just doesn't matter enough to me. 

Totally. Like, I’m not gonna go on the moon. 

Yeah, like, we can get to it now. But yeah, we probably lied about it in the 60s to beat Russia and shit—for sure. But like, yeah, that one I can’t get into just because the end game is not enough for me. 

The stakes are kind of low. 

Yeah, like JFK getting assassinated, I'm like, OK, here we go, now we got it. Alright, we got plot holes! 

Is that your favorite? The JFK assassination stuff? 

Yeah, I love it because it's the most realistic one. It's the one that's most believable. It's like how the fuck does one guy shoot one man from back to front? [laughs] It literally doesn't make sense. 

And the fact that Lee Harvey Oswald was on the radar of American intelligence for so long… have you read Libra by Don DeLillo? 

Libra? That’s my sign.

Oh great, love an air sign! I’m an Aquarius. 

I saw a girl on Twitter, she said—no, she wasn't on Twitter, I don’t know why I said that. She was in real life, and she said, “What are you?” I said, “I'm a Libra.” And then she said, “Libra men, stay away from me!” and she put up a cross like this. [Crosses his fingers like he’s warding off a vampire.] I was like, “I don't know who hurt you but it wasn't me. I don't know what this is about.”

People love to be dramatic about that stuff. But yeah, Libra is this fictionalized account of Lee Harvey Oswald’s life, basically following him all the way up to the JFK assassination. It’s fascinating. 

Oh, really? Is he a Libra? 

I think he was. Otherwise, it would be a weird title.

Here’s my thing: I know guns. When I was in the military, that’s what I did: weapons. I know weapons. You can't shoot someone from the front and back in three seconds. Unless you're the Flash, you feel me? And there's no magic bullet. There's no such thing as a magic bullet. I don't know why they even said that, that's so crazy. Can you imagine someone saying there's a magic bullet in today's age? 

They’d probably say it was a “smart bullet.” 

Yeah, right. Like, what the fuck are you talking about? 

Do you bank with USAA?

[Laughs] What the fuck? That’s the randomest shit I’ve ever been asked.

Military! My dad was in the military, so I bank with USAA, and honestly? Pretty good bank!

Yeah, no, I do not. I do have money in a USAA account, but I don't bank with them anymore. When you're in the military and you bank with USAA, there’s a lot of benefits—you get your money faster, a bunch of weird benefits. But left that in the past—I'm not big into the military. I'll just say this very quickly—I was treated really like shit the military. As someone who's more focused on the arts, I'm more comfortable in that world. The military is a world where people think so differently that it's hard to exist as me. Like, if you joined the military, you'd be like, “What the fuck is this?”

Oh, yeah, I would be horrible in the military. I hate running, and I don’t respond well to yelling.

Oh, there’s definitely gonna be yelling. You’re gonna run and get yelled at every day, no question about that. Everything is in the best interest of the military, not you. You as an individual have no identity in the military, and that's why I couldn't survive—because I'm too much of an individual myself. I gained a lot from my independence, so I can't be in a place where it's like, “You have to think like everybody else, or else.”

So you’re unwinding from touring, trying new things. What’s it like spending so much time on the road? 

It's a lot. I've been on tour for about a year now, just nonstop. I get very little break time. I probably had like a month overall to myself over the year—combined, not in a row. It really messes with me mentally.The biggest thing that tour takes away from me is I can't do what I want to do. So, I have to kind of just figure it out on tour. It sucks, but I think every artist goes through it. But like, fuck it, you know? I was broke as shit before, and I remember what that was like. I prefer being on tour.

What’s the hardest part? What makes the experience so taxing? 

The social thing. Imagine being isolated from everybody for a month, two months. All the things you do as a regular person? You can't do none of that shit when you're touring. It just takes a lot away from you as a human being. But honestly, a lot of artists are narcissists and crazy anyway, so it kind of fits into the lifestyle. But if you're not really like that… like, I worked a lot of regular jobs when I was growing up, all the way until I was 28. For the most part, I'm a pretty regular person. So it's taxing for me, but I'm pretty much used to it. But I’ve got like three months off now, and I'm good. I'm gonna celebrate my girl's birthday soon. I just want more time to do shit like that.

Do you go out a lot when you’re home in LA? I feel like a lot of working artists don’t necessarily do the nightlife thing.

A lot of people with notoriety don't really like to, because we spend so much time out and about just for the job. I do go to bars, but really low-key ones.

Interview aside, is this a bar you would go to?

Yeah, maybe a little trashier. This is kind of a nice bar but like, yeah, yeah, like a shitty bar. You know, that's what I'm used to. I'm pretty boring, yo! I'm a boring 30-year-old man. I don't really do too many drugs. I do a little [ketamine], like when I got off tour, just to unwind. I love that shit. Otherwise, it’s just weed. And champagne. Champagne is a drug! 

Do you drink coffee?

Hell nah! I do drink pumpkin spice lattes. I be bumping that white girl music—put on some Norah Jones, get that pumpkin spice! I didn't know that was like a white girl thing. 

No way!

I told someone else, I was like, “Yeah, I be drinking pumpkin spice!” and they were like, “So you're a basic white girl?” And I was like, “I guess!” 

OK. When did you find out it was a white girl thing?

Last month. Last fucking month. [laughs] Swear to God! I don't drink coffee, so I had a little bit of someone else's and I was like, “Damn, this shit slaps!” 

Oh, I get it. So you just recently tried it, and you loved it, but you didn’t know about the cultural phenomenon.

I had no clue! Because I googled it and I was like, “Does anyone else love this like me?” And then I was like, “Oh shit, I'm in the wrong spot!”

Katie Way is a senior staff writer at VICE. Follow her on Twitter.