Joji is back. - YouTube
Transcripts:
Good day, guys and me Duckman here. It's been almost 9 months since I uploaded my deep dive video about Jog's year-long creative silence. In that video, we explored how since releasing his most recent album, Smitherines, in 2022, Joji has slowly but surely withdrawn from public life and has effectively vanished from the public eye since late 2024.
And to be honest, up until this last week, that video was still perfectly up to date. For most of 2025, Joji has remained entirely silent. In February, one of his songs was featured in an episode of the animated show Invincible. And in that same month, his Instagram account would appear to accidentally follow an 88 Rising employee before quickly unfollowing later that day.
But other than these absolute crumbs of information, the radio silence from Joji and his creative outlets has continued. However, you may have heard the famous quote that reads, "There are decades where nothing happens and there are weeks where decades happen." Well, in the realm of Joji happenings, this has been one of those weeks.
There's been some pretty significant happenings that have revealed not only that Joji is finally back, but also given some pretty significant clues as to what we can expect. Bro gave us glimpse of us, and now we're finally getting a glimpse of him. So relax, get comfortable, and join me as we find out why the silence is finally over. Let's get into it.
On the 30th of September 2025, a Twitter account called Purple Forata made a post. That post read the following. I don't know if many Joji supporters follow me, but he's dropping for the first time in a while soon. Now, your first thought might be to wonder why this post matters. Literally anyone could make a post like this.
However, Purple Forata is not just anyone. They are a very respected member of what is known as the leak community, a group of individuals who are very skilled at finding and documenting unreleased music. Effectively, this user was claiming to have inside knowledge that Joji would be releasing new music soon. Now, I can already hear you saying, "Didn't some guy predict a leak like a year ago and that didn't happen?" And yes, you're right.
However, that individual quickly backtracked as soon as they made their post and blamed the spread of the rumor for delaying the release despite the fact that they were the one who spread the rumor. However, Purple for Mattera was much more reliable and they had the street cred to prove it. On September 16th, they made this post on Twitter, which predicted that a Nicki Minaj album would drop on the 27th of March, 2026.
On the 28th of September this year, news sites would announce that Nicki Minaj was in fact releasing a new album and that the album would release on the 27th of March, exactly as Purple Formata had predicted weeks earlier. This unmistakably confirmed that Purple Formata was a reliable member of the leak community and that same individual was now predicting that Joji would be releasing music soon.
Of course, the Reddit heard about this. the Reddit will hear about this. Well, no, let's not get the Reddit involved. And while some were convinced, others were much more skeptical. They weren't going to be convinced until we heard from the man himself. And who knows how long that could be.
Well, as it turned out, they would have to wait 2 days. On October 1st, 2025, an Instagram story would be uploaded by an artist known as Young Gravy. If you're not familiar with Young Gravy, he's considered by some to be a pioneer in the meme rap genre and depending on who you ask, is either extremely popular or a complete disgrace to the rap scene.
Regardless, this Instagram story features Young Gravy in his studio working on music. The video pans over and there he is, our boy Joji. Now, it's not clear if Joji was actually working on music with Young Gravy or just hanging out, but given Jog's history as the literal meme king of YouTube, as Filthy Frank, a collaboration with someone such as Young Gravy is certainly not unexpected.
Now, if you think Reddit went crazy with the leak news, they went even more insane after this video, and so did the various Joji Discord servers. And I'm not kidding. Within hours, they were performing FBI levels of investigation on this video, trying to glean every detail they could from Jo's first public appearance in a year.
First, they identified the others in this video. Savage Realm, the hyperman from Jo's shows and a collaborator in the Plum Court project. Getter, another artist and former collaborator of Joji, and Lil Toe, a collaborator and tour member of Jog's crew. This was interesting. Not only was Joji with Young Gravy, it seems he had a bunch of his crew with him as well.
And finally, the Joji Discord even isolated the voice in the audio and tried to determine what was being said. What is the guy from Craigslist? We wouldn't tell each other. While there wasn't really anything to glean from this conversation, some speculate that Joji was talking about how he hired the actors for his Plumc Court videos, such as Dracula from Dracula Flow off of Craigslist.
Now, despite the rampant speculation about this video, it did tell us one thing for sure. It was proof of life that Joji wasn't just still around, but he was actively hanging out with people still quite active in the music scene and people he'd worked with before. It doesn't confirm that he's necessarily about to do anything soon, but it certainly gave Joji's fans hope that something was in the works.
In terms of exactly what Joji is planning, fans will just have to wait and see. Or would they? On the 10th of October, a user named Fury would post on Twitter claiming that Jog's next single would drop in 3 days. They also revealed the artwork of the single as well as the name of the new song, Pixelated Kisses.
Now, a random poster on Twitter once again is not a great source of information. However, almost immediately, an audio file would begin circulating around which was well, unmistakably a new Joji song with the lyrics referring to the title of this song. Users noticed that attempting to upload this audio clip to YouTube or Soundcloud would cause the content matching system to trigger, labeling it as a Joji song.
This was clearly a legitimate leak and it appeared to have leaked from a digital streaming platform that had somehow made the song public too early. It seemed Joji was in fact coming back. And sure enough, not even 24 hours later, Joji would post his first social media updates in over a year, updating his profile picture and cover photo on various platforms and providing a link to his new WhatsApp channel.
Not long after, Joji's website would be updated, allowing users to sign up to receive updates on Joji's next project. Upon doing so, users would be sent a message telling them that he would see them at 12:00 a.m. Eastern time on October 14th. Perhaps most interesting was this statement at the bottom of the page. Coupled with the copyright takedown notices from the leak and this screenshot from the leaker, it seemed to imply that Joji has changed label and that he was no longer with 88 Rising, the label he had been with since starting his music career. Shortly after
the website update, Light Square in New York would be lit up with advertisements for the new project. And the official Joji account would share photos of this with the caption, "See you soon." And at midnight the morning of October 14th, that's exactly what we saw. Joji's first single in 3 years, Pixelated Kisses, was released on all streaming platforms.
A Visualizer music video was uploaded to YouTube. And interestingly, the label releasing the single appeared to be Palace Creek, not 88 Rising, not Plum Corp, but a brand new label, which one has to imagine is owned by Joji himself. Now, as we expected, everyone was very happy about this single dropping. Discord and Reddit would go crazy with excitement.
But one question still lingered. Was an album coming, or was this just a standalone single? As of the making of this video, no new album has been announced. However, one of the uploads of the official artwork for Pixelated Kisses has the name Joji LP4 pixelated kisses.jpeg. It's likely that LP4 is a placeholder name for Joji's next album.
LP refers to Longplay and four means Jo's fourth album. So, while no official announcement has been made yet, I suspect one isn't very far away. Now, if you enjoy music and internet culture update videos like this, I'd really appreciate it if you could support me by subscribing to the channel.
With my videos going straight to the top of your subbox, you'll be sure to never miss a beat when it comes to news like this. You can also find me on X or you can drop by my Discord server and come and say hello. Anyway, with all that being said, this has been NB Darkman. Thank you so much for watching. [Music]
