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