Album Review: JPEGMAFIA - All My Heroes Are Cornballs

JPEGMAFIA (also known as Peggy) is a man of eclectic tastes. His musical style is a hodgepodge of different genres, themes, and intentions. In 2018, JPEGMAFIA rose from the underbelly of hip hop with his breakout album Veteran, his second studio album following the release of Black Ben Carson in 2016. Veteran makes its presence known with its glitchy beats, biting lyrical content, and Peggy’s range of rap flows and vocal inflections. On tracks like ‘1539 N. Calvert’ and ‘I Cannnot Fucking Wait Til Morrissey Dies,’ he evokes a flow that is cool and effortless, spitting lines like “You talking shit, I'm talking shit, you catch a beat down” and “Pull up on a cracker bumping Lil Peep” with no anxiety, just straight confidence. He does not have to present himself as an aggressor in order to make you believe that he could beat your ass. JPEGMAFIA says it like it is, and if you don’t believe him, then he’ll show you in no uncertain terms. On other tracks, such as ‘Real Nega’ and ‘Baby I’m Bleeding’ JPEGMAFIA’s flow is as fast and erratic as the production under it. Veteran is also a showcase of Peggy’s politics, as he takes jabs at conservative figures such as Kelly Conway and Tomi Larhen, calls out the commodification of rap by privileged white people, and critiques neoliberalism on the track ‘Libtard Anthem.’

When Veteran dropped, we did not know how to categorize JPEGMAFIA. Some said he was experimental, some said he was industrial, some said he was lo-fi. What was undeniable to anyone to listen to his work was that JPEGMAFIA was a different breed of rappers. Here was a man playing with sounds, lyrics, flows, and ideas in ways the hip hop community had not seen before. Here was someone with something to say, and we were going to hear it. JPEGMAFIA’s music and persona have an ineffable quality to them that commands our attention. It is hard to turn away from him once you have gotten a glimpse of what he has to offer. That is why when Peggy promoted his newest project over the course of the summer by calling it a “disappointment,” fans were doubtful that this would actually be the case. After the release of two singles and a few videos showing the behind the scenes of the album’s creation, JPEGMAFIA dropped his third LP entitled All My Heroes Are Cornballs on September 13th. 

All My Heroes are Cornballs is a clear diversion from Veteran. While Veteran is very punchy, hard-hitting, and contentious, All My Heroes Are Cornballs is mellow, subdued, and self-reflective. If one can argue that Veteran was intended to introduce JPEGMAFIA to a larger audience, then one can also contest that All My Heroes Are Cornballs is Peggy’s response to gaining that substantial following, to becoming a “celebrity.” The title serves to this idea by poking fun at the concept of idealization. We tend to put celebrities on a pedestal, believe them to be some kind of superior beings to us due to their talent and status. JPEGMAIFIA does not want to think of those he admires in this way and does not want his fans to do the same to him. In an interview with Billboard, JPEGMAFIA said “The idea of me being an icon or something is a very funny thing, just because of my own weird insecurities....I’ve basically been every version of a rapper you can be. I’ve been the n---a with 50 views on YouTube, I’ve been the n---a with three downloads on Bandcamp, I’ve been that n---a with two fucking plays on SoundCloud for years. That was literally my lifestyle until last year.” This sudden launch into fame and the implications of stardom are the dominant themes that carry throughout the duration of All My Heroes Are Cornballs. 

The project opens with the track ‘Jesus Forgive Me, I Am A Thot.’ The song begins with a glitchy instrumental very much in line with his previous albums. A crowd’s cheers are distorted, followed by the voice of a woman that says “You think you know me.” The track then flips on itself, going from eclectic to melodic. Peggy raps on the verses before singing on the hook, a surprise for JPEG fans who are most familiar with his punchy rap style. This singing on the opening track is the precedent for the rest of the album, in which he busts out his vocal chops more than he has ever done on a JPEGMAFIA project. Singing, however, is nothing new for him. If one were to go back into his discography and find the projects he produced several years ago under different pseudonyms, it would become clear that Peggy is taking reference from himself on All My Heroes Are Cornballs and revisiting elements of his artistry that he had temporarily set to the wayside. 

JPEGMAFIA subverts expectations on All My Heroes Are Cornballs by playing with the idea of “giving the people what they want.” On the track ‘Kenan vs Kel,’ the first half features JPEGMAFIA spitting over a beat filled with electronic piano and soft guitar riffs. In the second half, the tone switches completely. The beat is intense and overbearing. The guitar blares, the drums make themselves present, and JPEG employs the aggressive vocal style that gained him notoriety in the first place. It is as if Peggy is telling the audience, “I know what you expect of me, and I’ll give it to you, but in the way that I want to.” If you want to hear JPEGMAFIA go berserk, you are going to have to hear him contemplate first. In this way, All Of My Heroes Are Cornballs requires more from the listener than his previous projects did. You are not being asked to simply listen, but to engage with the content on a deeper level. And if you cannot do that, then you can listen to something else. Peggy couldn't care less. 

JPEGMAFIA continues to toy with the preconceived notions of the audience on the tracks ‘JPEGMAFIA TYPE BEAT,’ ‘Grimy Waifu,’ and ‘BasicBitchTearGas.’ Less than a minute long, “JPEGMAFIA TYPE BEAT” is an instrumental interlude that layers samples on top of each other and speeds them up to create something wholly overwhelming to the listener. The beat is an undeniable allusion to the production style of industrial hip hop outfit Death Grips, an act that Peggy is constantly compared to despite them only being similar to a certain extent. For those who say “JPEGMAFIA sounds like Death Grips,” here is JPEGMAFIA purposely invoking their style to poke fun at such comparisons. “Grimy Waifu” is structured as a love song. It is slow and melodic, with JPEGMAFIA rap-singing about the figure in the song taking bullets for him. On the surface, the track is romantic. The romance he has, however, is not with a woman, but with his gun. Inspired by how military general encouraged soldiers to treat their guns like their girl and keep it with them at all times (Yes, JPEGMAFIA is an actual veteran), Peggy takes the concept even further with an entire ode to his rifle. 

On the interlude ‘BasicBitchTearGas,’ JPEGMAFIA covers the classic TLC track ‘No Scrubs.’ Peggy is no stranger to flipping pop songs. Last year he released the one-off track ‘Millennium Freestyle,’ a reinterpretation of the song ‘I Want It That Way’ by the Backstreet Boys. Much earlier in his discography, he also covered Carly Rae Jepsen’s ‘Call Me Maybe’ in 2013 under the name Devon Hendryx. JPEGMAFIA takes ‘No Scrubs’ from a jaunty pop hit to a haunting R&B slow jam. His version of ‘No Scrubs’ is completely separate from that of the source material, so much so that someone who had not heard the predecessor would not think they were even remotely the same song. JPEG’s singing on the track is impeccable, giving the song an emotional weight it did not have before. When we hear the lyric “A scrub is a guy who thinks he’s fly,” we know what we are expecting to hear. Again, Peggy turns our expectations on our heads, forcing us to adapt to his perspective. 

All My Heroes Are Cornballs is JPEGMAFIA’s most vulnerable project to date. With fame comes insecurity, anxiety, and a pressure to perform always. These concepts are explored most explicitly on the track ‘Free The Frail.’ In the intro, Peggy sings the lyric “Don’t rely on the strength of my image.” This lines repeats later in the song, incorporating itself into the chorus. In this way, JPEGMAFIA wants his art to speak for itself, no to be conflated with or dependent on his persona in order to reach audiences. In the first verse, Peggy says that he feels “annoyed,” “strange,” “afraid,” and “framed,” he feels as if there are so many eyes on him that failure is not an option. This need to succeed is reinforced by the outro, sung by Helena Deland. The music cuts out and she sings the lines, “Quicksand's too thick to stand (Go on, then)/ Figure out now what it is that you need/I'll step out for a minute to breathe/One set of footsteps in the sand, but I'm not being carried/If it gets out of hand, you can go on without me.” These lyrics indicate that JPEGMAFIA feels as if he is being weighed down but has no one else to place this weight onto. Because of this, he beleives he must he deal with his strife on his own. 

All My Heroes Are Cornballs continues to solidify JPEGMAFIA’s status in the rap scene as revolutionary. His newest project, although different than his previous two studio albums, is refreshing. He gives us themes we had not had to deal with and sounds we had not heard before in his music. His interpretation of stardom is unique to him and it shines on the album. It is a pleasure to see JPEGMAFIA get more in touch with his artistry and to see him explore the conventions that exist within rap just to throw them back in our faces, chopped and screwed, completely distorted from what we thought they would be. One could say JPEGMAFIA is pushing boundaries. I would say he is creating his own game with his own rules and his own playing field. JPEGMAFIA has undoubtedly made a name for himself. It is no longer up to him, but for other rappers, to step up to the plate. 

Reviewed by: Carter Fife