If you like your hip-hop as experimental and sonically challenging as it gets, then we may have found the album for you. JPEGMAFIA is a 28-year old rapper working from LA who creates exactly this type of rap music, with a millennial-esque edge to his lyricism. Veteran is his second full-length album (and I will admit, the first I have listened to) and it showcases a very modern and interesting take on rap music in 2018. It's wacky, weird, and makes damn sure that it makes a lot of fun out of current rap trends and events in the younger generation, whilst also paying tribute to hip-hop of old.
The album kicks off with '1539 N. Calvert', which to me comes off as a cold start - the beat is smooth, mellow, and pleasant, (which I do like) but when I first heard JPEG's voice come onto the track I groaned - is this just another rapper who'll lean on an "ay" flow to try and half-ass his raps throughout an album? You would think so from this track alone, but as soon as track 2, 'Real Nega' hits, you can forget all about that completely. After stretching an ODB vocal sample out to song's length and backing it up with some furious drums, JPEG jumps on the track and beats it to death with a riveting display of rap ability. "Alt-right want war, well that's fine then / bitch n****s in the way, well that's common / white boys getting mad cause of my content / Y'all brave on the web, keep it in the comments" sounds fantastic over such a bombastic beat, and he also shouts out Rhythm Roulette on this track, which follows a Myke C-Town reference on the first track. It's a great moment for the album. The beats start getting glitchy and messy from here on out; 'Thug Tears' sounds like either a motor catastrophically failing or a damaged MP3 file trying to play, and JPEG starts the track with a barrage of auto-tuned singing, which I'm not really a big fan of. 'Baby I'm Bleeding', however, makes a much better attempt at experimental rap, as JPEG once again spits fire over a quickly-repeated vocal sample of something sounds like GLaDOS. Already a head-banger of a track, the ante ups even further when the drums kick in halfway through the track; caution, your neck may just snap from the ferocity. It's definitely another standout track, and awe-inspiringly aggressive for a dude that started his album off with a trap-rap flow. Across Veteran, the album varies greatly in sound, making it difficult to nail down or have much idea of what is going on in the tracklisting. One minute, a hard-nosed industrial collage of weird noses could be scraping your eardrums, and the very next a chilled out slow-jam with great guest singing is playing, which is 'DD Form 214'. This gives a much-relieved break from the chaos, even if it is a bleak description of what it was like to be a member of the military. The respite is only brief, of course, as it's right back into the grimy bass and freakish sounds on 'Germs'. This is a problem I feel I have with the album - almost no songs are long enough to define themselves, most not even reaching the 3-minute mark. This leads to the album feeling like an unfiltered collage of sounds, and not all of it sticking - by the time an idea has started, such as on 'Libtard Antherm', (an 80-second song featuring frequent collaborator Freaky) it's over before it gets a chance to be fully explored, and we're already rushed into the next track. It's disorienting, & one of my least favourite things about the album. JPEG uses Veteran as a canvas to plaster all of his ideas at once, almost like a sonic mural. There are several single opinions and thoughts spread all over the place, none very much relating to the other - for example, 'My Thoughts of Neogaf Dying' is 90 seconds of the phrase 'I don't care' repeating, which is humorous as it is tongue-in-cheek. An occasional lyric will stick out from a particular track, such as "It’s ironic you hang with a n***a that beat women / And have the nerve to call yourself "Girl Pusher"" on 'Baby I'm Bleeding', his casual mockery of liberal arts degrees on 'Germs'; & track titles such as 'Libtard Anthem' & 'I Cannot Fucking Wait Until Morrissey Dies' speak for themselves. It definitely serves for an interesting listen, and definitely has some of the only artistic renditions of trap music I've ever heard - but as a grand statement, I feel that Veteran is a bit disjointed to make for a cohesive listen. There are definite highlights in the tracklisting, and if you love experimental hip-hop (think clipping., or slightly less violent Death Grips instrumentals) you'll love it much more than I did. By the end of the album, I feel like it could have been streamlined more to allow me to process the overload of information and different sounds thrown at me all at once, instead of being shut out by the sheer volume of noise. It's definitely creative - I'll give it that - but it overreaches at times. He saves the album from disaster, though, with his notable rhyming talent, and creative ear for instrumentals. I just hope that from here, he strips his work back to be less of a conceptual battering, and into a more cohesive project that adds up to more than the sum of its parts. 62/100 |
201820162015Scores0-30 = Bad
31-49 = Sub-par 50-60 = Average 61-70 = Decent 71-80 = Good 81-89 = Great 90-99 = Incredible 100 = Perfect Archives
September 2018
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