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Veteran (JPEGMafia album)

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Veteran
JPEGMAFIA sitting on a porch in front of a house with grey walls and a white door, he is holding a drink and his eyes are closed. Half of the photo is completely white due to a first of the (film) roll burn effect
Studio album by
JPEGMafia
ReleasedJanuary 19, 2018 (2018-01-19)
Recorded2015–2017
Studio
  • JPEGMafia's home studio
  • The Bell Foundry
Genre
Length47:13
Label
ProducerJPEGMafia
JPEGMafia chronology
Black Ben Carson
(2016) 		Veteran
(2018) 		All My Heroes Are Cornballs
(2019)
Alternative cover
Photo of a Louisiana diver's licence, licence photo features JPEGMAFIA smiling. The personally identifying information on the licence is blocked out by black bars and a text in a pixel-like font displays the word "veteran" under the licence photo.
Bandcamp and vinyl cover
Singles from Veteran
  1. "Baby I'm Bleeding"
    Released: December 1, 2017

Veteran is the second studio album by American rapper JPEGMafia. It was released on 19 January 2018 by Deathbomb Arc and Republic Records.[5][6] A music video for "Baby I'm Bleeding" was released on 1 December 2017.[7] A second video was released on 18 May 2018 for "Real Nega".[8] On 12 September 2018, a video for "1539 N. Calvert" was released.[9] The album was released to widespread critical acclaim and was featured in numerous year-end lists; in 2019, Pitchfork listed it at number 171 in their list of best albums of the decade.

Recording

[edit]

Most of Veteran was recorded while JPEGMafia was living in Baltimore and was mixed and mastered when he moved to Los Angeles in mid 2017.[10] He recorded around 120 songs and set aside 19 for the album.[11][12] The album was originally intended to be released on 22 October 2017, his 28th birthday.[13] JPEGMafia attributed the album's aggressive and chaotic nature to "other shit" he experienced in Baltimore, and was able to fully understand it when he became level-headed in Los Angeles.[10]

JPEGMafia calls Veteran an exercise in editing, in that there were a lot of moments he took out and some that almost didn't make it, and that he "reeled it back" more on Veteran compared to earlier records.[14] "Libtard Anthem" originally featured JPEGMafia doing a verse, but removed himself from the song in favor for Freaky's guest verse because he felt that "he summed it up perfectly".[15] "Dayum" was originally much longer, consisting of 3 different beats that he made, before being edited down to 1 minute 26 seconds because it was "not needed".[16] "I Cannot Fucking Wait Until Morrisey Dies" was also much longer, with "an intro and a whole other part" before being whittled down to 1 minute 27 seconds.[11]

Music and lyrics

[edit]

Matthew Moyer of Orlando Weekly labeled Veteran as the most freeform hip-hop album ever, even more so than the works of Death Grips and clipping.[17] The instrumentals are an amalgam of noise and glitch styles in the vein of Tigerbeat6 and Mille Plateaux, as well as punk rap, noise rap, trap, and "space-age R&B".[a] JPEGMafia's vocal performance is mostly abrasive (in a manner David Turner compared to MC Ride) but ranges from aggressive to calm to crooning.[b] These alterations happen abruptly all within "Thug Tears", beginning with the rapper singing, then rapping in staccato notes before rapping smoothly and singing again.[22] Turner notes the "goofy production keeps the record from same navel-gazing mythologizing".[21]

Veteran continues JPEGMafia's trend of referencing elements of popular culture, political and social issues, which he considers a presentation of an internet-dominated era.[17] In fact, critics described the album's "dissonance", "lithe sexuality", rage, and "jaded indifference" as an "incisive, contradictory, sometimes sarcastic" manifesto on the "jarring" state of the United States' social climate, specifically the "monstrous, Twitter-shit spirit of 2018", by a man mentally on the edge.[c] Analyzed Paul A. Thompson of Pitchfork, the rapper borrows the evocative language of artists like MC Ren, Ice Cube, and Eazy-E, and brings in the irony and bad-faith argumentation of usual internet discussion.[22] Topics include political unrest, feminism, hipsterism ("Real Nega"), the flaws of liberalism ("Libtard Anthem"), and gentrification ("Whole Foods", "Williamsburg").[d] The lyrics reference video games, anime, Rudy Giuliani, Tomi Lahren, WWE, MAGA, and The X-Files.[e] Individuals and institutions lambasted on the record include online critics, publications such as Dead End Hip Hop and Pitchfork, the alt-right, Whole Foods Market, neoliberals, Morrissey, SoundCloud rappers, Bill Maher, and Kellyanne Conway.[f]

Michael Cyrs wrote, JPEGMafia exudes "a modern grace without attempting to care about everything all the time"; this is best evidenced on "My Thoughts on NeoGAF Dying", where JPEGMafia repeatedly states "I don't care" over a hazy instrumental, presenting his disinterest in any scandal covered in the news.[25] On "Rock N Roll Is Dead", the rapper, in expressing his distrust of the mainstream press, threatens to "put hands on a blogger" and "make 'em beg for his life".[21] He also shows himself as unafraid to confront the threat of fascism on "Real Nega": "Alt-right want war, well that's fine then."[21] On "Williamsburg", JPEGMafia condemns the gentrification of his hometown of Brooklyn over a beat with a sound reflecting the cold and empty feeling of the economic trend; he argues that he is "selling art to these yuppies" and makes fun of the wealthy's penchant for overpriced coffee and Phoenix Suns shirts.[18][22]

Artwork and title

[edit]

Veteran refers to his four years in the United States Air Force and his life experience in the southern part of the country.[22] Multiple cover artworks were done for Veteran, one of which is the rapper's Louisiana driver's license, which references the food stamp cover for Ol' Dirty Bastard's Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version (1995).[22]

Critical reception

[edit]

Although JPEGMafia had been rapping and producing beats since he was 15, Veteran was considered to be his breakthrough album.[18] It was met with widespread acclaim from critics.[g] Thompson, in his 7.7/10 review for Pitchfork, praised the album as "a remarkable exercise in sound and texture", reasoning that it "takes white-hot riffs and the most distasteful parts of our national politics, chops them up, and somehow scatters them perfectly into place". He felt the record's best moments "makes the frayed edges of each element part of the atmosphere, a mess of distortion that works percussively and melodically". He also highlighted the moments of soul music sampling, describing it as placing the sampling of New York rap "in a late-2010s internet wasteland".[22]

Publication Accolade Rank Ref.
NME The Albums of the Year 2018
68
[24]
Noisey The 100 Best Albums of 2018
41
[20]
Pitchfork Top 50 Albums of 2018
37
[29]
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s
171
[30]
The Quietus 100 Best Albums of 2018
78
[23]
Rolling Stone The 30 Best Hip-Hop Albums of 2018
20
[19]
Spin The 51 Best Albums of 2018
24
[21]
The 405 The Top 50 Albums of 2018
7
[25]

Track listing

[edit]

All tracks written and produced by JPEGMafia

Veteran track listing
No.TitleLength
1."1539 N. Calvert"2:37
2."Real Nega"2:31
3."Thug Tears"3:18
4."Dayum"1:25
5."Baby I'm Bleeding"2:32
6."My Thoughts on Neogaf Dying"1:34
7."Rock N Roll Is Dead"3:08
8."DD Form 214" (featuring Bobbi Rush)3:15
9."Germs"2:41
10."Libtard Anthem" (performed by Freaky)1:20
11."Panic Emoji"3:00
12."DJ Snitch Bitch Interlude"1:23
13."Whole Foods"2:04
14."Macaulay Culkin"1:57
15."Williamsburg"3:33
16."I Cannot Fucking Wait Til Morrissey Dies"1:26
17."Rainbow Six" (featuring Yung Midpack)4:43
18."1488"2:28
19."Curb Stomp"2:15
Total length:47:13

Notes

Charts

[edit]
Chart performance for Veteran
Chart (2024) Peak
position
UK Independent Albums Breakers (OCC)[35] 13
UK R&B Albums (OCC)[36] 9
UK Record Store (OCC)[37] 30

Notes

[edit]
  1. ^ [18][17][19]
  2. ^ [17][20][21]
  3. ^ [23][24][20]
  4. ^ [17][24][19]
  5. ^ [18][17][24][19][21]
  6. ^ [25][22][18][14]
  7. ^ [17][26][27][28]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ Farrow, David (December 17, 2018). "2018: Favorite 50 Music Releases". Tiny Mix Tapes. Retrieved March 4, 2019.
  2. ^ a b St. Michael, Jonathan (September 18, 2019). "JPEGMAFIA All My Heroes Are Cornballs". Exclaim!. Retrieved September 18, 2019. 2018's critically acclaimed Veteran was a warped and glitchy blend of experimental and industrial hip-hop
  3. ^ Williams, Aaron (September 18, 2019). "Jpegmafia's Satirical 'All My Heroes Are Cornballs' Mocks The Pageantry Of Modern-Day Rap". Uproxx. Retrieved October 14, 2019.
  4. ^ Kot, Greg (February 7, 2019). "Jpegmafia has developed his own hip-hop vocabulary, and is riding it to success". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved November 19, 2019.
  5. ^ Brown, August (June 29, 2018). "L.A. rapper JPEGMAFIA lashes out at the right and the 'fake-woke' left. Just don't call it 'trolling'". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved March 3, 2019.
  6. ^ "JPEGMAFIA - Albums". Jpegmafia.net. Archived from the original on March 7, 2020. Retrieved March 3, 2019.
  7. ^ Ham, Robert (December 1, 2017). "JPEGMAFIA Presents Dizzying New Video for 'Baby I'm Bleeding'". Paste. Retrieved April 15, 2019.
  8. ^ Burney, Lawrence (May 18, 2018). "JPEGMAFIA's "Real Nega" Video Is a Calming Contrast to His Hectic Output". Noisey. Retrieved April 15, 2019.
  9. ^ Burney, Lawrence (September 12, 2018). "JPEGMAFIA's video for "1539 N. Calvert" is an ode to Baltimore's Bell Foundry Space". The Fader. Retrieved April 15, 2019.
  10. ^ a b Weiss, Alexandra (30 October 2018). "The Politics of Being JPEGMAFIA". Office Magazine. Retrieved 30 October 2021.
  11. ^ a b Griffin, Dominic (14 February 2018). "JPEGMAFIA returns with "Veteran," a kaleidoscopic look at life under Trump". Baltimore Beat. Retrieved 1 November 2021.
  12. ^ "Digital Crate Digging: JPEGMAFIA on Anime Soundtracks, Lost Albums, and Rick Rubin". SPIN. 2019-09-30. Retrieved 2021-11-12.
  13. ^ Case, Wesley (6 September 2017). "Onetime Baltimore rapper JPEGMAFIA uses music to make a statement — and take on Trump". Baltimore Sun. Retrieved 30 October 2021.
  14. ^ a b Younger, Briana (18 April 2018). "JPEGMAFIA is the out-of-pocket rap rebel the world needs right now". The Fader. Retrieved 1 November 2021.
  15. ^ Salkind, Benj (7 March 2018). ""I Can Rap About Politics and Make it a Jiggy Song": An Interview with JPEGMAFIA". Passion of the Weiss. Retrieved 1 November 2021.
  16. ^ JPEGMafia. "Injury Reserve is Disappointed". YouTube. All My Heroes Are Cornballs Mystery USB. You know Dayum, on the album it's a minute 18 seconds, but in reality it's a whole track. On here it turns into a whole beat, I made like three beats from the same sample, but I just cut all of the extra shit because it was not needed.
  17. ^ a b c d e f g Moyer, Matthew (February 14, 2018). "Rapper JPEGMAFIA laughs while the world burns". Orlando Weekly. Retrieved June 7, 2019.
  18. ^ a b c d e Pearce, Sheldon (October 4, 2019). "Radical rapper Jpegmafia: 'Black people have things to be mad about'". The Guardian. Retrieved October 12, 2019.
  19. ^ a b c d "30 Best Hip-Hop Albums of 2018". Rolling Stone. December 26, 2018. Retrieved January 1, 2019.
  20. ^ a b c "The 100 Best Albums of 2018". Noisey. December 5, 2018. Retrieved December 5, 2018.
  21. ^ a b c d e f "The 51 Best Albums of 2018". Spin. December 12, 2018. Archived from the original on March 24, 2019. Retrieved December 13, 2018.
  22. ^ a b c d e f g Thompson, Paul A. (January 31, 2018). "JPEGMAFIA: Veteran". Pitchfork. Retrieved December 27, 2018.
  23. ^ a b Turner, Luke (December 4, 2018). "Quietus Albums of the Year 2018, in Association with Norman Records". The Quietus. Retrieved December 4, 2018.
  24. ^ a b c d "NME's Albums Of The Year 2018". NME. December 18, 2018. Retrieved December 18, 2018.
  25. ^ a b c "The 405's Top 50 Albums of 2018". December 20, 2018. Archived from the original on December 20, 2018. Retrieved January 1, 2019.
  26. ^ Thompson, Paul A. (January 31, 2018). "JPEGMAFIA: Veteran Album Review". Pitchfork. Retrieved March 13, 2018.
  27. ^ Breihan, Tom (February 21, 2018). "JPEGMAFIA Makes Murky Lo-Fi Rap Into Something Exciting". Stereogum. Retrieved March 13, 2018.
  28. ^ Darville, Jordan (February 22, 2018). "JPEGMAFIA rules, and here's proof". The Fader. Retrieved March 13, 2018.
  29. ^ "The 50 Best Albums of 2018". Pitchfork.com. December 11, 2018. Retrieved January 8, 2019.
  30. ^ "The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s". Pitchfork. October 8, 2019. Retrieved November 23, 2019.
  31. ^ Fagen, Lucas (January 18, 2020). "JPEGMafia, Isolated in His Own Head". Hyperallergic. Retrieved December 15, 2023.
  32. ^ Liss, Zachary (December 12, 2022). "Artist Spotlight: JPEGMAFIA's Dark, Enigmatic, and Humorous World". RampageWired. "Thug Tears," which is a true testament to Peggy's energy and sampling ability. It samples a myriad of media, including a scene from "The Matrix" (1999).
  33. ^ https://youtube.com/MvEXkd3O2ow?t=11 | This is the exact moment sampled. The "Woah" sound can be found at approximately 15 seconds into "Thug Tears."
  34. ^ Grantcharov, Ves (February 11, 2018). "Newcomer JPEGMAFIA champions noise rap". Technique. Retrieved December 15, 2023.
  35. ^ "Official Independent Album Breakers Chart Top 20". Official Charts Company. Retrieved May 3, 2024.
  36. ^ "Official R&B Albums Chart Top 40". Official Charts Company. Retrieved May 4, 2024.
  37. ^ "Official Record Store Chart Top 40". Official Charts Company. Retrieved May 3, 2024.
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