Uncle Meg is an emcee from Brooklyn who used be part of the group known as Handjob Academy. In 2016, they dropped their first solo album, Bug, and shortly thereafter began using he/him pronouns and began a personal exploration of gender expression and medical transition. This is a deeply personal process to a lot of people, but fortunately for us, Uncle Meg decided to make their journey very public, posting on social media along the way, explaining things like medical procedures and the process of getting government IDs changed. Now it’s finally time to delve into some of the emotional and mental side of things, as Uncle Meg releases the EP simply titled Butterfly.

All of this extratextual information helps you understand the context around a project like Butterfly, and visibility certainly helps people in different ways, but at the end of the day, when you release a hip hop EP, you need the beats and rhymes to be dope. The good news here is that Uncle Meg is a talented emcee, and there is some really interesting and enjoyable modern production happening here as well. The EP opens with “Take Me Away,” which opens with this engrossing-yet-eerie distorted strings sound that plays out a really memorable riff, that immediately makes your ears perk up and wonder where the song is going. After the intro, the song transitions into a trap/R&B groove, and Uncle Meg hops on the mic and starts breaking down some external and internal struggles about finding his identity, from mental health issues to the cruelty of others, which leads to this grand chorus, in which Uncle Meg declares, “I’ll never listen to what they say. I’ll never stay the same, I’ll never go away.” The title track features some electro-pop production and a chorus sung by Laura Lee Bishop, which sets the stage for Meg declare, “Living or dead, I’m a butterfly,” as he discusses how he’s had to explain himself over and over to those in his personal life about the changes he’s gone through. There’s no weak point on the five-song EP, which all leads up to the beautiful closing track, “Choke,” an introspective song that shifts the focus to the day-to-day, with the repeated refrain of “keep on moving” as the song and EP comes to an end.

Uncle Meg doesn’t owe us anything, but public discourses of important subject matter like gender identity combined with dope hip hop is more than welcome at Scratched Vinyl. Not only is the subject matter important on Butterfly, but it also feels like Uncle Meg is really beginning to find his artistic voice as a solo artist as well.