All My Heroes Are Cornballs - JPEGMAFIA: Review
is a Baltimore rapper, producer and songwriter who emerged with his debut record Black Ben Carson in 2016. After some collaborations, singles and shorter projects keeping him busy Peggy released his breakout sophomore record Veteran to massive critical acclaim in 2018 and instantly became one of the most well respected voices in experimental hip hop. After a series of YouTube videos claiming that his next record would be a disappointment and two singles released he dropped Cornballs just one year after breaking out out with Veteran.
Review By Lavender:
Veteran is a great record, and I can hear the audible sigh of relief from Peggy stans who thought I might try and convince otherwise. While I didn't love the record quite as much as it seems like most people did it scored strongly on my year end list and had an incredibly high ceiling of great tracks. Suffering a little bit in its deeper cuts was the main disconnect between myself and the general music listening population. Despite what some people might tell you Veteran isn't perfect, but it did have the potential to be a huge stepping stone for an incredibly promising artist. On Cornballs JPEGMAFIA steps into some even more experimental territory with a lot of success, but nearly identically to the record that came before it the album suffers from some rough deep cuts.
At 18 tracks long you really shouldn't go into the project expecting every track to be perfect, given that no track here exceeds four and a half minutes and that there are many that run under two the records runs a solid 45 minutes or so. But a unique element about the way that this record is organized makes it seem like an incredibly cohesive and constantly evolving single listen. These tracks tend to change up their sound multiple times across even the shortest songs here, even the short instrumental passages JPEGMAFIA and BUTTERMILK JESUS TYPE BEAT manage to reach an array of musical territories in their one minute staying power. Given that almost no song ends how it started and very few songs start how the previous track ended this record feels like listening to an album made up of 35 very short tracks that come together to form a cohesive listening experience. So as hard as it is to cover even everything that goes on in one track, I did my best to assess them and pick out some of my favorites.
Both the singles that led towards the release of this album are excellent and both land near the beginning of the record. Jesus Forgive Me, I Am A Thot was the lead single and an absolutely killer song with a dreamy instrumental and absolutely amazing beat drop. Peggy's singing is quality and the blend of great bars an instrumental complexity is exactly what makes Peggy so special and intriguing. Beta Male Strategies has an amazing instrumental that sounds like something we could have heard on Earl Sweatshirt's Some Rap Songs that evolves into some electric guitar interpolations and on top of that Peggy is sharp as hell in the second half of the track and drops some total bars. The first section of the album is rounded out with a number of other great songs as well.
Kenan vs. Kei doesn't get off to the best start but boy the second half of this song is fantastic as the industrial sounds go from wandering in the first half to explosive and perfectly weaved into the second half with Peggy dropping some heat on top of them. Grimy Waifu has what may be my favorite instrumental on the entire album as Peggy dips his hand into some nature sounds that sound almost folk inspired or even like field recordings when paired with the soft tempered strings and ambient space in the mix. Peggy plays the song lowkey in his performance but it pays off ultimately and makes for a great track. PTSD encroaches on video game soundtrack music with the chiptune bleeps in the instrumental but the bars and flow here are absolute dynamite. The tracks second half introduces this amazing jungle beat percussion but abandons it almost immediately in favor of a dreamier more reverb heavy fade out. It's like Peggy had so many good ideas he wanted to get in that the songs are just packed full of so many amazing and interesting passages.
The record also ends with three great tracks just like it starts, DOTS Freestyle Remix is an excellent adaptation of the verse Peggy delivered on Kenny Beats YouTube show "The Cave" that adds a ton of texture and structure to the original verse and makes for an overall killer tune. The closing track Papi I Missed You is the longest here and sees Peggy deliver two longer and more conventional verses that I really enjoy before the old school hip hop inspired beat collapses into a hazy and mystical outro that feels very fitting for the end of the record. Post Verified Lifestyle is an amazing track that opens up with a verse where Peggy is just absolutely giving it his all and the results are throttling with the first minute or so of this track making for such an insane experience. The track works its way through a dreamy spoken word passage before getting more conventional in its conclusion but it is all worthwhile and makes for a great complete listen.
BBW sees Peggy getting poignant as he considers his legacy and what he hopes, or rather expects to leave behind in a series of sharply delivered bars on a short but very sweet song. PRONE! is an absolute banger with some booming and distant percussion that I absolutely adore and while it may not be the hardest I've ever heard Peggy go it is plenty enough to keep pace with the huge instrumental and make for the albums hardest hitting complete song. Thot Tactics is the final song I really enjoyed that sees Peggy giving one of his more meditative performances as his voice is mixed very low behind a sea of overwhelming keys and rattling trap style high hats. The song would have totally fit in on Veteran and is another one of my highlights here.
A couple of tracks here really have their moments but get completely lost in weird passages or wandering transitions. This is the point where I have to talk about the records biggest flaw, and one that infects every song I'm yet to talk about, Peggy's singing. While there are moments like Jesus Forgive Me where the singing goes over brilliantly much more often Peggy is crooning out over these already jagged instrumentals and washing himself out with so many vocal effects that it is absolutely unbearable hearing his voice. Rap Grow Old & Die x No Child Left Behind has some singing in its middle and end that is very difficult to get through and despite having some real compelling moments isn't a track I want to return to. Free The Frail features some decent bars from Peggy and another instrumental highlight but the singing is very uninspired and it is one of the slower paced tracks that tends to drag on even given its short runtime.
Unfortunately just like Veteran there are a few songs here that are absolutely unbearable and I wish had been left off the record entirely. The title track has one of my favorite instrumental moments with some blaring icy synths that sound straight out of a Tim Hecker song, which is a shame because it also features some terrible sung verses and a few different kinds of bad vocal effects in its runtime, this is one of those where I want to like it for the instrumental but the vocal are just far too rough to tolerate. Life Is Hard, Here's A Song About Sorrel once again gets dragged down by awful vocals and some mind numbing effects but thankfully it is a song that was pretty underwhelming anyway so I guess there is no massive loss. By FAR the worst moment on the record is a mind boggling, but thankfully short one.
BasicBitchTearGas is a brief cover of TLC's No Scrubs except it is done in a completely vapid and overly warbled way that strips down all of the original songs charm. Peggy absolutely cannot keep with the tempo of the song and is drains it of all the charisma and swagger of the TLC version and of course, features some terrible vocal effects.
Once again I really enjoy a JPEGMAFIA record and once again I really look forward to seeing where he will go next. Unfortunately I also once again find myself thinking about what could have been with just a little bit of the fat trimmed on this record, and thankfully this time around there is a much easier culprit to point out as to what brings the record down for me, the singing. With more consistent execution and the thriving creativity we've seen on his last two records I fully think JPEGMAFIA is capable of dropping one of the best hip hop albums of the decade, it just looks like that decade is going to have to be the 2020's.
In spite of what this album does wrong it does a whole lot right and just as importantly, it does a lot right that you will not hear anywhere else in the realm of hip hop, maybe not even in all of music. Peggy continues to be a creative force, who when executing at the top of his game manages to blend together genres and styles so effortlessly like a musical renaissance man. Not to mention his attitude and lyrics across the record are consistently impressive even if they may take more of a back seat compared to Veteran. I do have a feeling Cornballs will once again be one of the better hip hop albums of the year and will surely make its way onto my year end list in a few months, but if I know Peggy fans that won't be quite enough to please, just kidding, love you guys. 8/10
