Music / JakProgresso

JakProgresso, also known widely as Jak Tripper, is a former comedian turned underground rap artist whose works are a prime example of the Horrorcore genre. As standard with the horrorcore genre, his songs often deal with themes such as rape, murder, kidnapping, hardcore drugs, conspiracy, some occultism, and then a bit of egotism and his own unique dark poetry and bizarre metaphors.

Jak has collaborated with of number of fellow Horrorcore artists and other media producers. In summer of 2014, after exchanging words, Jak met cartoonist Emily Youcis at Tromadance and lent his music for her upcoming Alfred Alfer movie.He is the founder and CEO of Blak Church Records and Fatal Dose Records.

Bandcamp Discography:^note Non-exhaustive, as he is prolific to the point that he will most likely finish a new EP before you can finish reading this.

• I Wish I Was Normal EP
• Dustwitch
• Corsican Brothers (Jakprogresso & DJ Camo)
• Occult Revival
• Demon Rum
• Notes From the Underground
• Occult Seminar
• Pestilence
• Resin: The Lost Sessions EP
• Random Violence
• Don't Look in the Basement
• Melodies for Children
• Crawlspace Tapes Vol.1
• Return to the House
• Planet Asylum 2
• Planet Asylum
• The House That Jak Built

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Tropes relating to this musician:

• Addiction Song: Every other song he's made has had some reference to doing hard drugs. One of his rap names is Jak Tripper for a reason.
• Addled Addict: Despite all of the times he's glorified drug use, Jak's life has not been sunshine and roses. He's alluded to a bad childhood and a history of hospital visits (of varying causes), and it's no secret that he spent several years as a homeless drifter. His song "Dry Land" is one of the only tracks to really touch upon any of this, and the lyrics to that song are nothing short of heartbreaking.
• Alternative Hip Hop: Even by horrorcore standards, his music gets a bit too strange to fall under standard labels half of the time, especially when he's producing his own beats. Sonically, his music frequently samples old movies, cartoons and other soundtracks as well as distorted folk records and numerous other extremely unlikely sources. (For more info on the lyrical side of things, see Reference Overdosed below.)
• Artistic Stimulation: Is definitely amongst the number of musical artists who use drugs to give themselves a creative boost. An old interview which surfaced on a forum more or less confirms that he likes (or at least liked, at the time Random Violence was being written) to isolate himself and then record while on acid.
  "but you know... you know, take some note books, a recorder and a radio and shit; and go in the woods on a pilgrimage or whatever, and just fucken..drop hits and write what ever comes out, should be a album or a idea for one...."
• Ax-Crazy: Par for the course when it comes to his characters and songwriting, given his particular brand of music.
• Battle Rapping: Has been dabbling in this alongside his music career for a long time, appearing on battle leagues (most notably iBattleTV) under the name Jak Tripper as recently as 2022 as of this writing. Rumors have circulated that he's been battling since the '90s, and he has confirmed on his own that he used to battle at the now-legendary Wetlands venue.
• Binge Montage: His music video for "Ogopogo" features footage of him doing multiple different types of drugs while writing in his notebooks. It's one of the only music videos he currently has.
• Black Comedy: Being both a Horrorcore rapper and a former comedian, it only makes sense that he dips into this every so often. Much more prominent in his Battle Rapping appearances.
  • Black Comedy Burst: Inverts this frequently.
  "[I'm] Jak Tripper, I do weddings."
• Blatant Lies: Exaggerates these frequently, usually for comedic effect.
  "I shoot up bleach before all of my battles."
• Bloody Hilarious: Some of the more over-the-top descriptions Jak uses for his brand of violence end up being this.
• The Charmer: A number of his songs chronicle him seducing women.
• Dead Guy on Display: In "Cattlegrid".
  "Look at my doll collection, mom. Pardon the flies."'
• Double Entendre: This comes standard with being a battle rapper. His tend to stand out due to how strange and (more times than not) line-crossing they are, though.
• Drugs Are Good: Advocates this at every turn, especially psychedelics. However...
  • Drugs Are Bad: ...He's much less of a proponent of cocaine and was trying to get off it as early as the Random Violence days. He also admits that heroin is not at all safe, and claimed in one of his live videos that he would never do PCP again at his age.
• Drunken Master: Of a sort; he frequently raps while on drugs, even freestyling while intoxicated during certain songs and battles. His most infamous example of this was during his battle against Tink Da Demon, where he was not only tripping on acid (which he can be seen dropping before each of his rounds), but also managing to freestyle in the third round even after he had already said all of his material.
• Drunk on Milk: In addition to talking about actual drugs, he has lyrics about shooting up bleach, tripping on mold, getting high off the fumes from a person's insides, and other bizarre things. A lot of it is said in jest, but it says something about his persona when all of those things are believable coming from him.
• Eviler than Thou: Almost every battle of his has at least one instance of him pulling this against the opponent after they say lines about guns or killing people.
• Evil Versus Evil: All of the times he's battled other horrorcore rappers can be seen as this in some form or another.
  • Evil Versus Oblivion: Played with in his battle with Tink Da Demon.
  "Fuck killing Tink tonight; by morning, I want Earth's population dead!"
• Eccentric Artist: Not just an "artist" in the musical sense, either. He draws bizarre pictures a lot, having created multiple covers for his own releases as well as prints and other pieces he's sold online.
• Fan Disservice: He never mentions sex in a way that's appealing. Let's just leave it at that.
  • His old website was also full of this trope. (NSFW warning)
• For the Evulz
• Functional Addict: Seems to have no trouble maintaining his many professional endeavors and his immense creative output despite getting high pretty much every day, and was even managing to put out multiple EPs and mixtapes a year when he was still hooked on harder drugs. As mentioned under Drunken Master, he's even capable of freestyling while under the influence and has rapped entire verses while off his face on many occasions.
• Funny Schizophrenia: Averted; whenever he mentions seeing things that aren't there, it's not played for laughs.
• Gargle Blaster: "My mouth numb, 'cause I'm always spitting raw coca paste."
• Hookers and Blow: Doesn't mention these as often as you'd think (in the same song, anyway), but they do make an appearance together at least once in his music.
  Doing lines thicker than legs on trousers
  Off asses of Kansas City strippers
  We drag her up the stairs no outfit
• Horror Comedy: His rap songs are usually of the horror-dominant variety, consisting of Murder Ballads with the occasional humorous moment or three. His battle rap verses, on the other hand, run a much wider gamut.
• Horrorcore: The most prolific artist in the genre by far.
• Hurricane of Puns: A lot of his more recent songs, and several of his battles. More times than not, his lyrics boil down to a laundry list of obscure jokes, extremely dark puns and weird metaphors. Battle Rapping in general is full of the second thing nowadays, so it's not entirely out of place.
• Junkie Parent: He has a daughter. He does drugs. Do the math. Fortunately, theirs doesn't seem to be as unhealthy a relationship as it might sound on paper, and the few times he's mentioned his daughter indicate that he cares about her the way a father should.
• Last-Second Word Swap: Played this for laughs in his rap battle against Louie Valentine.
  "And I still sell acid— I mean...I used to sell acid"
• Lighter and Softer: "Butterfly Blood" of I Wish I Was Normal shifts from his tales of murder to a dark love ballad.
  • His music in general has taken a more whimsical and cartoonish bent as of late, slowly replacing the dark, vivid imagery and manic, scary energy of past releases with punchlines, self-parodying lyrics and a greater emphasis on Black Comedy.
• Lyrical Dissonance: Some of his songs have very happy and upbeat instrumentals. His lyrical content does not change in any of them.
• Madness Mantra: All of the songs he's written that have a chorus end up with said chorus sounding like this.
• Magic Mushroom: Trips on psilocybin mushrooms both in his raps and in his real life. His Patreon series "Shroomflix" is essentially a bunch of podcasts that he does while in the middle of a shroom high.
• Megaton Punch: Every line he delivers that involves punching someone details a gory (and oftentimes downright silly) version of this. You'd think he actually has super strength with how many times his characters talk about punching people so hard.
• Miniscule Rocking: His standard. Several of his songs (especially the ones from later in his career) are 1-2 minutes long, many of them being edited freestyles over a single loop or two of music.
• Mistaken for Junkie: Subverted; he does do drugs (and a hell of a lot of them at that), but his appearance causes people to make wrong assumptions about which kinds he does.
• Motor Mouth: "Cabin Fever" veers off into this territory within the first few seconds of the song. "Yip Wreck" also has several moments of this.
• Murder Ballad: Too many to name, most often concerning women he seduces.
• Naked Nutter: Go back up to Fan Disservice if you're really curious about this one...
• Nightmare Fetishist: Several of his songs and almost all of his battles mention him keeping a collection of corpses. In real life, Jak himself is obsessed with all things horrifying and has also admitted to loving the glow emitted by fire as a kid.
• Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: Has repeatedly alluded to people being weirded out by him whenever he's around.
• Ode to Intoxication: "Charlie Sheen Bars" is a standout example, but several of his songs can be taken as this.
• Opium Den: Mentions these more than once.
• Parody Commercial: Made one as a promo for his EP "The New Acid Test". It makes the promo ads for Doris look downright normal.
• Recovered Addict: Sort of... He got himself off cocaine and PCP after being addicted to both for years, and he may have been on heroin once upon a time if the lyrics to one of his more serious songs are to be believed. He still does acid, eats mushrooms and smokes weed though, so he's not completely clean.
• Reference Overdosed: Both his music and his battle rap verses are absolutely drenched in references both common and obscure. He's referenced everything from Satanism, Thelema, The Jonestown Incident and Hunter S. Thompson to children's TV shows, internet videos, other rappers and Jerry Hackney's infamous "out of the ring" knockout.
• Ritual Magic: Has referenced various branches of this (including the aforementioned Thelema and chaos magick) hundreds of times, and is an open practitioner in real life.
• Self-Deprecation: His battle rap performances often have moments of this. He also does it a lot in real life.
  "And I know, I look like someone just sold me base."
• Seriously Scruffy: Started to fit the bill◊ somewhere in the middle of his career. Thankfully, he seems to be taking better care of his appearance nowadays.
  • Cleans Up Nicely: The average person would never guess that this◊ guy is the same rapper as the one pictured above. Even after the years of drug abuse, he looks a lot more healthy◊ now that he's grooming himself a little.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Dips into this in just about every song. His vocabulary is extremely dense, and his unusual stream-of-consciousness style of writing makes full use of it.
  Rum on a journal, smokin' Purple Urkle
  positioned on the dark side of the Earth Moon
  Ballistic gloves with a burned tool (yeah), drinkin' youth blood during equinox vernal
  Infernal, sick cow, the flow curdled.
  My cult form a semi-circle, and remove cornea, external
  so you can unveil politicians cannibalizin' prepubertal
  • One of his mid-career albums is titled "The Preposterous Omnipotent Noggin Basher".
  • A post from a Twitter user suggests that if Jak had been included in the same data study that gave Aesop Rock the title of "largest vocabulary in hip-hop", the former might have actually beaten the latter, and would have definitely beaten the guy who made second place. Considering that his gargantuan vocabulary is what Aesop Rock is known for, this is no small feat.
• Something Something Leonard Bernstein: Almost all of the older songs where he raps faster than normal end up like this, largely due to his disjointed rapping style. Songs like "Cabin Fever" will have whole sentences fly past a listener, with all of 2-3 words being recognizable the first time around.
• Stalker with a Crush: Played for Laughs (of a much darker variety) during his rap battle against Athena.
  "I'm gonna get murked out for the shit that I'm sayin'; I know where you live, followed you and— pff, I'm just playin'."
  (Crowd laughs)
  "Not really..."
  • Stalker without a Crush: A recurring angle in several of his other battles, including a battle with fellow iBattleTV veteran Tapedeck where he claimed to have been stalking his family in the weeks leading up to the battle.
• The Stoner: Jak is an avid drug user, and the main characters in his raps are even more so. He's not subtle about it, either.
  • Erudite Stoner: He shares a lot of wisdom and advice with his viewers during his livestreams and, ironically enough, will advise against doing dangerous or stupid things while high. He's also extremely well-read.
  • Stoners Are Funny: Did a few stand-up comedy shows that went well according to him, and clearly has a knack for telling jokes if you aren't put off by dark humor.
• Stylistic Suck: Many of his beats (almost all of which he's produced himself) are intentionally lo-fi and grimy. It's only when other people produce for him that his music starts to sound more modern.
• Surreal Horror: His metaphors and double-entendres throw his raps in this direction at times, due to how frequently outlandish they are...
• Surreal Humor: ...That is, whenever the sheer wackiness of his writing isn't turning them in this direction instead.
  • His personal website practically ran on this trope back when it was still online.
  Question: which of these three statements about JAKPROGRESSO is considered fact?
  1) JAKPROGRESSO was birthed from a bi-polar Petri dish containing tissue samples of Albert Fish's cerebellum, an insect-parasitic nematode—Mermithida, to be specific—and a torn piece of handmade parchment inscribed with "unsigned."
  2) JAKPROGRESSO resides on the fourteenth floor of an abandoned mannequin factory in Katonah, New York, where he divides his time between performing intense Romanian powerlifting routines with disassembled nautical machinery and crocheting neon-colored shawls for local elderly women.
  3) JAKPROGRESSO is a dope emcee, producer and multi-faceted visual artist, and through his exploration of these creative mediums, allows us inside the asbestos-leaking boiler room of his brain—a place where convention is non-existent, and genius bleeds out vibrant, violent red.
  Answer: all three are true. And then some.
• Uncommon Time: Subverted. All of his actual beats are in 4/4, but the songs sound like this due to his abnormal rapping style.
• Undiscriminating Addict: His characters are almost always this, but Jak himself ultimately averts it; scattered information shows that he eventually got off cocaine (and likely heroin as well, if a few lines from "Dry Land" are to be believed) after starting out with this mentality, and he doesn't have plans on going back.
  Ide: What have you been getting into since you recorded Melodies for Children?
  Jak: Trying to stop doing drugs, and fucken get my life straight.... well half way.. i still blaze.
  Ide: What about hard drugs.. you still do coke?
  Jak: Nope that shit is evil as far as im concerned; and im laying off that shit...
• Villain Protagonist: Jak, as he plays the killer in each of his ballads.
• Vocal Evolution: His vocals have slowly become grittier-sounding over the years, and his rapping style has grown increasingly odd in terms of structure, with unusual rhyming patterns dominating most of his later material.
• Word Salad Lyrics: The more off-kilter side of his discography can come across as this. Whenever he's going full-throttle, he's capable of producing some of the strangest and most unconventional writing in hip-hop, which has the downside of being incredibly confusing to interpret if you aren't used to the way he describes things.
  Please be seated
  I flush region
  Polymorphous pearl
  On a pancreas island
  Deformed hormones secreted
  When the green rush
  Endorphins bust
  Embryonic sack depleted
  Drowned fetus, drown
  Fuck Indie execs
  Can't wait for the next wack generation of kids to spit next
  Sick of this mess
  That's why I stay isolated like polygamous sects
  I died once, they're now trying to dig the pills out from the pit of his chest
  I write self scripts, then spit flows delivered depressed
  Adrenaline river send shivers and sweat
  Trying to kick it like morphine addiction neglect
  This houseboat sitter
  Johnny Ultra Virus
  Lit through the slits and the filterin' nets
  Flesh radiation wavelengths wither in sets
  LCD - splitter vivid-vision and lapis lazuli prisms impressed
• Working Out Their Emotions: The song "Dry Land" airs out Jak's conspiracy theories and grievances with the world before diving further into his personal life than any other song he's done. He explicitly starts off the song by saying 'Why do it? Because...I've got shit to say.', as if predicting his fans (or whoever knows him personally) asking why he would veer off from his explicit horrorcore style to write something like that.
• Would Hurt a Child: After reading everything else on this page, did you really think that this trope wouldn't be here?
  • Exaggerated in his battle with Noxx, where he starts off the battle by saying "I swear to God, I will shoot this kid in the fucking face!"

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