JPEGMAFIA played Northeastern – 2/10

Noise-rap upstart JPEGMAFIA played a wild Sunday night set at Northeastern’s afterHours, with support from Brandie Blaze. 

And to think, I almost stayed home on Sunday night and watched the Grammys.

Meanwhile, rapper/producer JPEGMAFIA – whose bracing 2018 LP Veteran is among the more instantly head-spinning hip-hop records I’ve heard in a long while – packed an extremely hyped crowd into the Northeastern Starbucks. Staking out a front row spot is usually pretty easy in that room – not so by the time I got there on Sunday.

Queuing up his own beats from a Macbook in a proper one-man show, JPEG waged an all-out aural assault and sent said crowd into a total frenzy almost instantaneously. His stage banter was offhand and frequently funny (he recently met Rick Rubin; Morrissey won’t acknowledge him; Varg knows they have bad blood), but his delivery of the Veteran-heavy set was all volatile bursts of total fury. I’ve seen a lot of shows in this weird little spot, and this has to rank among the best. He leveled the place.

Dorchester rapper Brandie Blaze, a signee of Northeastern’s student-run label Green Line Records (who also presented the show), garnered an enthusiastic response of her own with a short but fun opening set.

Shooting Notes:

I’ve been the proud owner of a Fuji x100F for approximately a month – since my original x100 was deemed Unfixable by the Fuji service techs. I’ve done some street photography with it, but hadn’t really put the pocketable fixed-lens body through its paces until the other night. Expecting a lower-key evening than I got, it was the only camera I brought with me, and I’m honestly shocked by how well it performed in a chaotic l0w-light situation. Even at an unforgiving f/2 the autofocus was on-point, and the images hold up to close scrutiny better than I ever would’ve expected out of a camera (and sensor) that small. Maybe mirrorless really is the future.

Anyway, see the photos from both sets below.