From YouTube Pranks to Melodic Rage Music

Do you ever wonder what it might sound like if Playboi Carti made quiet storm music? Joji’s “Pixelated Kisses” might be for you. This is melodic rage. Or maybe it’s like amped-up trip-hop. All these kids that are going to the Carti tour, the OsamaSon tour, what are they going to want to listen to five or 10 years from now that reminds them of the music of their childhood, but also has classic enough songwriting that it defies any kind of particular time or era? “Pixelated Kisses” feels like the answer to that question. There’s still something that’s a little bit unknowable to me about Joji. Joji’s been releasing music really for a decade, but his discography is kind of scant. It always feels like he’s arriving, dropping a few really, really elegantly crafted songs and then just kind of disappearing. So each time he comes back, it feels like a reawakening. Joji did not actually get his start making music. He was a YouTube prank comedian. He used to go by Filthy Frank doing a bunch of gross stuff on the internet. To me, the signature Joji song to date is called “Glimpse of Us.” It is so calm that knowing his back story, every time I listen to it, I was like, there’s surely no way that that guy made a song that was this unerringly pretty. And yet he did. His biggest songs have been traditionally song pop and R & B balladry, and have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of plays. This new song, “Pixelated Kisses,” seems to want to split the difference between that kind of classic song approach with what is the sound of the now.