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The Juan Huevos Hip-Hop Breakfast Burrito— part black bean, part goat cheese, all nuts—has been steaming up the Triangle for a while now. The sometimes abrasive, self-effacing dance-rap bangers of Huevos (aka Jon Gregory) challenge a crowd as much as they move it. He cleverly samples indie rock and is most often clad in skinny jeans. Live, yeah, he often ends up shirtless, maybe even in his undies, drenched in sweat and muscle-bound, scarred and glistening.

But if you think Marky Mark, you’re missing the point. This shit is Iggy Pop: raw, real, alienating, but also charming and ultimately, a total party. Huevos’ smartypants-with-a-drunk-swagger rhymes can trudge the uneasy, self-loathing ground that the average hip-hop super-ego dare not.

He’s rhymed with the indie-pop big boys Islands (and was actually thrown offstage by unknowing security guards while with them). But his collaborations with producers and artists around the globe are more telling: KRMPCK (Argentina),  Spoek Mathambo (South Africa), L.E.G. (Brussels), Debmaster (France), Cuzzo aka Eric from Meanest Man Contest (San Francisco), Crash Overdrive (Los Angeles), Jaesen K (Richmond, Va.), Subtitle (Los Angeles/ Berlin/ Brussels). “It’s not uncommon for me to send a verse out to someone, forget about it, and then it hear somewhere randomly," Huevos says. In 2009, he released two sister albums, Treasure Bath and Golden Shower: High Class Demo, both on the Briefcase Rockers label.

In short, JWaves is serious about creativity and not afraid to hustle on projects. Nor does Huevos have any trepidation about being a bit of artistic contradiction, both disgusted and entertained by his antics, his life, his swag. In fact, his hip-hop often approaches the meta, purposefully sinking into seedy, questionable situations with every intention of setting it to a beat. —Eric Deines