All My Heroes Are Cornballs is the latest album from experimental hip-hop artist JPEGMAFIA (Peggy) and the follow-up to his critically acclaimed 2018 album Veteran. Cornballs, however, i sa departure from his previous efforts and features far more singing and relaxing than anything in his prior discography. As the man himself describes it; ‘this formless piece of audio is my punk musical’.
At the core of All My Heroes Are Cornballs are two things. Firstly, abrasive rage and secondly, sweet melodies. The album switches between these two sounds on a dime and never simply commits to one mood. These changes are either seamlessly interwoven or sudden tonal shifts.Tracks like ‘Rap Grow Old & Die x No Child Left Behind’ best showcase this with the core progression involving a wavering white noise and drum kit before transitioning into these delicate piano chords alongside Peggy soothingly singing the chorus. This is aggression you can vibe to.
There’s also this great sense of humour throughout all of Jpegmafia’s work. The absurdity of some many of his song titles alone just draws you in with names like; ‘Life’s Hard, Here’s a Song About Sorrel’, ‘Grimy Waifu’ and albums’ lead single ‘Jesus Forgive Me, I Am a Thot’. Furthermore, there’s such a wide variety of samples used on here from Undertale sound-effects,PS4 notifications, and even George Costanza rants. These all just add so much to the personality of the album no matter how insignificant their usage might seem.
The main marketing campaign for All My Heroes Are Cornballs involved Jpegmafia hyping up the album as his most ‘disappointing’ yet. Songs were teased through videos of Artists (like Kenny Beats, James Blake, and even Jeff Tweedy) being shown snippets from the album all under the guise of them being ‘disappointed’ by the overall result. While this was all jokes and just a fun marketing strategy; it’s easy to see where Peggy was coming from. Cornballs comes off more like an experimental abrasive pop album than a rap album more often than not. That being said, this is easily my favourite of Jpegmafia’s albums so far and an easy contender for my album of the year. If you want an album that you can massage someone to just as easily as you could fight them; give this a listen.
Promotional image obtained from: Jpegmafia.net (2019), Albums.
Retrieved from: http://www.jpegmafia.net/albums
