JPEGMAFIA’s All My Heroes Are Cornballs rides 
on the success of his 2018 effort Veteran. The same 
motifs, tools and ad-libs set the scene again as MAFIA 
traces back his anguish, trauma and anxiety in his 
characteristically murky, comical lo-fi rap. His signature 
“you think you know me” line tags nearly every track, 
circling back to an ever-persistent theme of there being 
more pain and truth beneath one’s surface persona. 
Much like his former releases, All My Heroes conveys his 
trauma as a veteran, with imagery of bullets and mental 
turmoil scattered across the tracks. But don’t let this fool 
you into thinking this album is a Veteran 2.0.
“It was funny to me,” MAFIA said of Veteran’s 
success in an interview with Billboard. “It was 
interesting seeing people react to something I made in 
a private time, having them attach weird, preconceived 
notions onto it that that aren’t real.” Veteran presented 
itself at a point in MAFIA’s career in which he took a 
turn towards more personal work. Operating in the 
experimental underground rap scene for years, MAFIA 
never expected Veteran to explode onto the mainstream 

rap charts. “There was nothing indicating it would be 
anything else. I’m glad it did receive the reaction it did, 
though. That was a blessing.” 
MAFIA is haunted by the same troubles he was 18 
months ago, from being a former veteran to his mental 
state and aspirations for his career. This time around, 

however, a lot of it is muffled under his newfound 
popularity since Veteran. This is projected into a lot of All 
My Heroes songs, a dense 18-track project cut from the 
93 that MAFIA created since Veteran — with these, it’s 
clear that fame doesn’t afford the same ease as being an 
underground Baltimore rapper. 
“Beta Male Strategies” follows this narrative directly. 
Not apparent from the get-go, this song serves as a 
clap-back to Twitter trolls who trash MAFIA’s work 
and character without having a true scope of either 
one. He directly shifts from telling off his haters to “say 
what you said on Twitter right now” to proclaiming 
“Young PEGGY, I’m a false prophet / Bringing white 
folks this new religion” in reference to his embrace from 
publications like Pitchfork. A tried-and-true theme 
in the rap scene, but unlike any other artist, MAFIA 
manages to create a comedic bend, audibly chewing food 
as he recites “Ain’t no details / Ain’t no conversation” 
onto a beautiful, hazy synth-wave intro. 
Sentiments on MAFIA’s potential to disappoint 
haters are mimicked from Twitter throughout the 
entire album. “Post Verified Lifestyle” most directly 
taps into this energy, computer-mouse clicks ringing in 
the bare, bouncy lo-fi intro. MAFIA, however, follows 
in with hard hitting vocals, his imagery oscillating on 
a blurred continuum of gunshots and internet activity. 
“I’m treatin’ this bitch like a cuck, brrt, MAC, loadin’ it 
up,” he spits in the first verse. 
Sonically speaking, All My Heroes shudders through 
hard-hitting samples and keyboards to sheer twinkling, 
plucking synths and flutes. Never a sparse or stable 
moment, the album toys with our expectations as it 
deftly cuts back between the rougher MAFIA we met on 
Veteran to a softer, subdued version introduced to us on 
All My Heroes Are Cornballs. It’s most impressive when 
it morphs our perception of sound, the imperceptible 
pitching, coughs and sighs, gun ad-libs and looped 
samples subtly coloring the entire experience. This, 
strangely enough, ties the entire album together, shading 
the chaotic beat shifts and sporadic vocal outbursts 
well under the amplified glitchy beats and scratchy 
instrumentals. 
This blurry concept unfolds and pairs well 
thematically. Though certainly far from a concept album, 

it forms itself on top of references that blend well into one 
another and amplify the messages carried by the sound. 
“PTSD” aptly conveys this. It’s MAFIA at his most 
exasperated, as he raps about his mental state. Its intro 
beat mimics the sound of multiple gunshots firing at once 
after an echoing narrator recites “Don’t stop” over and 
over again under sheer keyboards. Snapshots that paint 
individual songs like this carry on throughout others to 
generate a more cohesive feel. Notably, “Grimy Waifu”, a 
track that seemingly harkens back to your favorite anime 
intro from 2014, proves itself to be less about a potential 
love interest and more about his relationship to a weapon 
of some sort, the metaphor constantly evolving between 
his ideas about his job to those about war and racism. We 
find a similar effect even in brief references to guns in 
other songs’ verses, whether a gunshot sounding ad-lib 
or a reference to him stuffing a glock in his pocket. 
At the thematic core of the album is the track “Kenan 
vs. Kel.” A direct reference to the iconic ’90s sitcom 
“Kenan & Kel,” the song unfolds as a combat between 
two sides that should be working together. It features 
the most effortless beat shift of the entire album and ties 
in nearly all of its themes and ideas. It harkens back to 

the female perspective introduced to us on lead single 
“Jesus Forgive me, I Am A Thot.” Through constant 
references to being a “thot,” MAFIA communicates 
his unwillingness to conform to society’s standards 
for his music and persona. With some of the album’s 
most creative bars, it manages to tie in images of him as 
“Prince Peach” in the Mario franchise while conveying 
messages on nonconformity and unwillingness to appeal 
to white people. 
At its most deft and creative, All My Heroes Are 
Cornballs succeeds in its capacity to tie in themes, 
motifs and imagery into a central motif. In a way that 
Veteran couldn’t, it guides and scolds the persona of 
JPEGMAFIA known to the public by bouncing off 
of Twitter references and his more elaborate fashion 
choices that lead to the Heroes era. This brings us closer 
to a MAFIA who transfers every emotion and idea 
abstractly into his music in a way that casual listeners 
and, more importantly, haters will never understand. 
By striving for a true, unique and personal take, 
JPEGMAFIA manages to convey more about himself 
as an artist and appeal to fans without sacrificing his 
originality.

MAFIA gives no shits on ‘All My Heroes are Cornballs’

ALBUM REVIEW

DIANA YASSIN
Daily Arts Writer

All My Heroes 
Are Cornballs

JPEGMAFIA

EQT Records

This summer, I saw “Network” 
for the first time. Then I saw it again. 
And again. And again. Sidney Lumet’s 
incendiary 1972 newsroom satire has 
become inescapable, lingering in my 
thoughts just long enough to necessitate 
a rewatch. Every time I return to it, I feel 
like I’m strapped into a roller coaster 
that only plummets downward. That 
feeling of intense, unnerving, endless 
vertigo is an inevitable part of watching 
“Network,” a movie that stretches 
and twists its depraved fantasy until 
it resembles reality. For as verbose 
and esoteric as it is (we’re talking 
about the movie that Aaron Sorkin 
cites as an inspiration for becoming 
a screenwriter), there’s hardly a dull 
moment in Paddy Chayefsky’s Oscar-
winning script.
I find myself going back to “Network” 
so ravenously that it plays out like 
several types of movies packed into one. 
The first act is innocent and reserved 
compared to the rest of the movie, a dark 
examination of broadcaster Howard 
Beale (Peter Finch, “Sunday Bloody 
Sunday”) and his frank consideration 
of 
suicide 
during 
his 
last 
live 
broadcast before retirement. When he 
announces this intention on the air and 
reinvigorates ratings for the financially 
floundering news division, “Network” 
becomes an entirely different kind of 
movie. It loses all notions of morality 
or order, if it ever had them to begin 
with. It becomes a story uniquely of 
the ’70s, a nightmare of gasoline prices, 
generational schism, stagflation and 
obscene corporate politics. What I find 
remarkable about the rest of the movie 
is how easily it pulls me into its orbit. I 

buy into the absurdity time and time 
again not because I want to — I simply 
can’t help myself. If “Network” is all one 
big joke, then I want in on the punchline. 
The transformation of “Network” 
into a hypothetical hellscape happens 
so fast you might miss it. Experiencing 
this for the first time is akin to falling off 
a cliff. The movie is confidently going 
somewhere unpredictable and you are 
powerless to stop it. Howard himself is 
an indicator of this shift, turning from 
a past-his-prime broadcaster pushed 
out by the network to the company’s 
hottest product, a “latter-day prophet 
denouncing the hypocrisies of our 
time,” as he is ultimately known. “I’m 
as mad as hell and I’m not going to 
take this anymore!” he complains. And 
America complains with him, literally 
opening their windows and yelling this 
token remark into the thunderous night. 
But the far more compelling character 
to arise from the film’s turn to violent 
sensationalism is head of programming 
Diana Christensen, played by Faye 
Dunaway (“Bonnie and Clyde”) in 
one of my favorite performances ever. 
Amid an office of crusty aging male 
executives, Christensen is far and away 
the most vibrant element of the movie. 
Experiencing her taking advantage 
of Howard’s explosion of viewership 
is purely satisfying. She is beautifully 
neurotic and unforgiving, planning 
three, four steps ahead for every 
possible outcome of her ambition. She 
moves her coworkers, even the higher-
ups of the network, around like chess 
pawns both physically in the newsroom 
and structurally in the corporation, 
all of these razor-sharp calculations 
constantly apparent in Dunaway’s 
disposition. 
If the first and second acts have sent 
us off the rails and into the abyss, the 

third act is where “Network” jettisons 
its audience into the roiling lake of 
fire at the bottom of the pit. It’s hard 
to comprehend exactly how grim the 
narrative turns; this is where multiple 
viewings have allowed me to internalize 
the sheer scope of the carnage. When 
we learn what the title “Network” is 
actually referring to — a web of corporate 
cosmology, dollars that control the 
world, the death of the individual — the 
movie becomes a little too prescient for 
comfort. Of course, we learn all of this 
through Ned Beatty’s (“Toy Story 3”) 
legendary and terrifying monologue for 
which he won a Best Supporting Oscar. 
It’s impossible to witness this scene 
and ignore its logic. “There is only IBM 
and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, 
Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are 
the nations of the world today,” Jensen 
preaches. A possible reading of this 
line and “Network” as a whole is as a 
compact time capsule, starting with 
its feet firmly planted in the ’70s and 
ending in a bleaker, more modern era. 
As 
damning 
as 
the 
finale 
of 
“Network” is, both to the monstrous 
corporations of the world and the 
wicked populism that fuels cable news, 
it’s all one big joke. It’s little more than 
a playlist of worst-case hypotheticals, 
cycled to the point of insanity. The 
movie fearmongers, it coaxes one into its 
carefully spun half-truths. By the end, it 
may be hard to know exactly what’s real. 
That’s why I haven’t been able to keep 
myself away from the movie. “Network” 
has an iridescence in its commentary: 
It’s satire and reality mixed irreversibly 
together. This flexibility makes the film 
a thrilling, enigmatic rewatch. And I 
know that for all the certainties I attach 
to its meaning, satirical or otherwise, 
the next time I watch it I will be just as 
unsure as I was the first time. 

The absurd corporate politics
of ‘Network’ will never get old 

FILM NOTEBOOK

The 2019 Man Booker nominees are out 
and, with a tense month of reading ahead, why 
not rest on our laurels and remember 2018’s 
winner, “Milkman.”

It takes only a page or two of reading 
to realize that the cover of “Milkman” is 
deceptive. The binding of the 2018 winner of 
the Man Booker Prize depicts an innocuous, 
fluorescent-pink sunset — one of those once 
a year, stop-and-snap-a-photo sunsets that 
makes “Milkman” stands out among its 
fellow books.
The sedative lightness of the cover seems 
to admit innocuousness. But “Milkman” 
is not innocuous. Nor is it gentle, or quiet, 
or apologetic — nothing that the cover 
may suggest about a subdued, romantic 
narrative. To say I wasn’t excited to read the 
Booker winner would be a lie — based on the 
superficiality of covers and excerpts, I have 
rooted for “Milkman” since its nomination 
on the long-list — but the way I fell in love 
with reading “Milkman” was not in the 
pleasant, blushing manner I had expected. It 
was a cycle of shock, recoil and return.
Anna Burns’s third novel narrates the 
story of an 18-year-old girl (referred to as 
“Middle Sister,” as none of the characters 
in “Milkman” are prescribed actual names) 
over the course of two months. Her unnamed 
town is saturated with violence — violence 
from the ubiquitously demonized enemy 
countries “over the water,” violence from 
the renouncers of the state that control 
Middle Sister’s town and violence from the 
state police as they intervene in a village 
of scattered revolutionaries. Surprisingly, 
though, this war-zone setting is but an 
offhand normality in the book. Instead, it is 
Milkman, a paramilitary that begins making 
unwarranted advances on middle sister, that 
takes the place of chief antagonist in the book.
At first glance, Burns lays out an invidious 
landscape that seems to hyperbolize the 
dark experience of growing up as a woman 
in the late 20th century. Maybe, Burns 
seems to suggest, the descent of society 
would look like this for all genders. But 
on second thought, the landscape Middle 
Sister walks — and how her hyperaware, 
rightfully-paranoid thoughts congeal in it 
— becomes painfully real. Middle Sister’s 
encounters with Milkman while walking, 
her fears of being drugged, the pernicious 
comments coming from third brother-in-law, 
all resonate uncomfortably with the realties 
meeting women today.
This daring, critical kick at that experience 
of being a woman pays off. The apotheosis of 
the book’s dark and applicable portrayals is 
perhaps Tablets Girl, a “girl who was actually 
a woman,” that is one of the local outcasts in 
Middle Sister’s town due to her propensity to 
poison people. This usually takes place, most 
suitably and without retribution, in bars. 

People flee from Tablets Girl, people watch 
their drinks when Tablets Girl is around. It’s 
not just Burns’s clear allusion to date-rape 
that that is to be appreciated here, but her 
spiked humor and exaggeration also.
This is not to reduce “Milkman” down 
to a forced, constricted focus on gender-
politics though. Burns’s writing alone is 
remarkable (something I refuse to say 
passively). “Milkman” is brimming with 
endlessly 
long 
paragraphs, 
lose-your-
train-of-thought stretched sentences and 
digressing thoughts from Middle Sister that 
render the book incredibly complex. At first, 
I was perturbed by this formal and royal-
esque writing, especially upon an encounter 
with a paragraph spanning four, almost five, 
pages. But as I continued, I found myself 
— in an unlikely way — reading Middle 
Sister’s voice in an uninterrupted pattern 
even more critical and translucent than I 
expected possible. This is assisted by Burns’s 
near-perfect draw of synonyms through the 
book, making her writing appear dependably 
careful and personal.
I was enamored by the characters in 
“Milkman” and the abrasive humor that was 
tacked onto them. It isn’t often that I get a 
full cast of characters (narrator, antagonist, 
family) that are so real, so exciting to 
encounter. Most memorable are the “wee 
sisters,” Middle Sister’s three younger 
sisters who, despite their young ages, are 
infatuated with topics such as French 
revolutionaries, 
going 
through 
“Kafka 
phases” and eavesdropping every moment 
they get. Characters like the wee sisters offer 
unexpected gratification along Burns’s dark 

timeline of events. The real humor displayed 
make “Milkman” all the more authentic and 
pleasurable.
I love “Milkman” because it is a fruitful 
attempt to offer me hints of a human 
experience I will never be able to understand, 
let alone be familiar with. Perhaps the most 
evocative and vivid account in the vein of 
social-rebellion and unwanted-gaze I have 
ever encountered, “Milkman” is a narrative 
that has been told repeatedly, even frequently 
in the 21st century. Burns’s unequivocal 
writing turns this narrative into a fearsome 
chant, one well worth shouting along to.

A timely throwback
to Burns’s ‘Milkman’

HALL-OF-FAME BOOK REVIEW

JOHN DECKER
Book Review Editor

ANISH TAMHANEY
Daily Arts Writer

UNITED ARTISTS

AMAZON PRIME / YOUTUBE

EMMA CHANG

6 — Tuesday, September 17, 2019
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

