Mixtape Download: Jeremiah Jae – Bad Jokes

Rapper and producer Jeremiah Jae recently dropped his cohesive, story-like project “Bad Jokes”, which employs dark humor and irony as a means for exposing flaws in mass media. Here, “bad” reads as both foolish and wicked, and the motif of a mindless and somewhat scheming entertainment industry runs throughout the mixtape.

JJ chops comedy sketches to make them sound grim, includes the self-important voices of news reporters on “King Raid”, and uses a bizarre sample of a German vocal on “Guns N Butter” for a disorienting experience which is laughable, slightly frightening, and always original. “We not tellin’ jokes, just reveal the hoax,” Jae raps on “King Raid”; the hoax represents everyone from mainstream comedians and phony fortune tellers, like the one on “Soul Yoga”, to commercial rappers who are “new in the game” and “in it for the coupe and the chains”. The essence of “Bad Jokes” eludes clear definition, but the idea that pervades is that people have ulterior motives for action, like the girls in “Pervert”, who only watch sports “to see buff men in shorts”. “Bad Jokes” features production by Flying Lotus, Jonwayne, and Oliver the 2nd, and is a winding adventure that is consistently intelligent and funny, despite the title.