Twelve hours. That’s all the warning Joji gave before dropping Yeat onto PIXELATED KISSES and watching what happened.
The pairing makes absolutely no sense on paper. Melancholic alt-R&B crooner meets Portland’s most wilfully obtuse rage rapper, and yet here we are, staring at something that shouldn’t work but does.
Sort of.
The remix dropped December 3rd as another preview of Piss In The Wind (6th February 2026 via Palace Creek), marking the first time these two have shared a track.
Apparently Yeat’s turning up again on “Silhouette Man,” which suggests Joji’s diving headfirst into something stranger than anything SMITHEREENS offered.
What Actually Changed?
Not much, honestly. The original PIXELATED KISSES already sounded like Joji finally breaking free from whatever creative handcuffs he’d been wearing, all that glitchy, grating production we loved back in October.
The remix keeps that intact. Yeat just shows up halfway through, mumbles over the same grinding synths and booming 808s, then disappears before you’ve properly clocked what he said.
And that’s the thing that works.
Yeat doesn’t try to match Joji’s longing-soaked delivery. He brings something colder, more destructive. Where Joji sounds like someone desperately waiting for a text back, Yeat sounds like the person who left them on read whilst burning their own flat down.
The verse about causing damage and turning pages feels less like disconnection and more like active sabotage. It’s a different flavour of being unavailable, which makes the whole collaboration sharper than you’d expect from a typical remix cash-in.
The Production Holds
Joji produced this himself, which matters. He doesn’t soften the rage beat to accommodate Yeat or flatten his own vocals to make room.
The track stays aggressive, those distorted bass tones still scrape, the hi-hats still jitter around like faulty machinery.
Yeat slots in because the production was already built for chaos. His flow just rides the turbulence Joji created.
What’s missing is expansion. The original was under two minutes. The remix adds maybe twenty seconds.
For a collaboration between two artists who both thrive on atmosphere, that brevity feels criminal.
Just as Yeat finds his pocket, the track cuts out. You’re left wanting another verse, a proper bridge, something that lets them actually inhabit the same space instead of taking turns.
The Visuals: An Epilepsy Warning Worth Heeding
Directed by James Mao, the accompanying music video deserves its epilepsy warning. Every frame pulses with pixelated distortion, simulating a corrupted video call where the connection drops every few seconds.
Joji appears in fragmented clips, his image stuttering and glitching like a poorly buffered stream. Japanese bargirls populate the visual landscape, their movements chopped and distorted.
Yeat materialises in his signature balaclava, his face obscured by digital noise that makes him look like a transmission from a dying satellite.
Clips of space shuttle launches play in reverse and slow-motion, echoing the track’s central metaphor about failed communication and satellites falling from orbit.
The video captures something crucial about modern relationships: the way technology promises connection but often delivers only approximation, distance, and lag.
Fan Reception: Divided But Engaged
The internet can’t decide if this is brilliant or half-baked, and honestly, both camps have a point. Yeat’s current direction does align with Joji’s experimental turn. The verse fits. But the runtime kills momentum.
Two minutes for a remix featuring one of hip-hop’s most interesting voices feels like watching someone set up an incredible shot and then cutting the film early.
This is becoming Joji’s signature move lately, crafting these gorgeous, immersive soundscapes and then bailing before they breathe. “If It Only Gets Better” did it. “Past Won’t Leave My Bed” did it. Now this. It’s either genius restraint or annoying self-sabotage, depending on your tolerance for wanting more.
I’m leaning towards annoying.
Thematic Coherence in the Digital Age
Look past the production theatrics and you’ve got a song about how digital communication mangles intimacy.
Joji established that in the original, relationships mediated by screens, always threatening to collapse when the wifi drops.
Yeat’s verse complicates it by introducing someone who chooses chaos over vulnerability. One person’s waiting for the satellites to come back online. The other’s actively cutting the cables.
That tension makes the collaboration work conceptually, even if the execution feels rushed. They’re both addressing disconnection, just from opposite ends of the wire.
The Bigger Picture
This lands alongside “If It Only Gets Better” and “Past Won’t Leave My Bed” as previews of Piss In The Wind. Taken together, they suggest Joji’s abandoning the polished melancholy of SMITHEREENS for something rawer and messier.
The fact he’s doing this under Palace Creek, his own imprint, after years of fans questioning how much control he had? That context matters.
Bringing in Yeat reinforces that shift. This isn’t Joji playing it safe with a big-name feature. It’s him choosing someone equally allergic to convention.
Final Verdict
The PIXELATED KISSES remix succeeds at creating something neither artist would make alone.
That’s what good remixes do. Yeat transforms Joji’s solitary spiral into a dialogue between two people experiencing the same failure differently. The production holds. The visuals hit. The thematic thread stays taut.
But Christ, that runtime. Just as things get interesting, it ends. Maybe that’s the point, modern connection does cut out mid-conversation, leaving you staring at frozen screens. Or maybe Joji just needs to stop treating two-minute tracks like completed thoughts.
If Piss In The Wind delivers more of this fractured, aggressive energy without the frustrating brevity, we’re in for something special. If it’s ten more ninety-second ideas, we’re in for an annoying album.
The remix makes you feel the static. Just wish it let you sit in it longer.