vinylfanatics.com

**★★★★☆**

Barrington DeVaughn Hendricks doesn't give a damn about your comfort zone. Operating under the moniker JPEGMAFIA, the Baltimore-born, Brooklyn-based producer-rapper has spent years weaponizing chaos into art, and nowhere is this more evident than on his breakthrough album *Veteran*. Released in January 2018, this 19-track sonic assault feels less like a traditional hip-hop album and more like a fever dream transmitted through a broken radio in a collapsing warehouse.

Before *Veteran* dropped, JPEGMAFIA had been lurking in the underground for years, building a reputation as rap's premier digital anarchist. His earlier projects, including *The Rockwood Escape Plan* and *Black Ben Carson*, established him as an artist unafraid to bite every hand that feeds the industry. But it was his relocation from Phoenix to Baltimore – a city he describes as teaching him "how to really be angry" – that provided the crucible for *Veteran*'s creation. Working primarily out of his bedroom studio, Hendricks crafted beats from the most unlikely sources: video game soundtracks, obscure indie rock samples, and field recordings that sound like they were captured during an earthquake.

*Veteran* exists in a genre of one, though if pressed, you might call it experimental hip-hop with a PhD in destruction. JPEGMAFIA's production style feels like what would happen if Death Grips collaborated with Aphex Twin while trapped in a malfunctioning computer. Beats stutter, glitch, and collapse into themselves before reassembling into something even more unhinged. His rapping style matches this controlled chaos – sometimes delivered in a conversational whisper, other times screamed like a man possessed, always with the precision of someone who knows exactly how unsettling he wants to sound.

The album's opening salvo, "Real Nega," sets the tone with its jarring transitions and Hendricks' declaration that he's "the type to sample your favorite rapper's death." It's a mission statement wrapped in a threat, and it works. "Baby I'm Bleeding" stands as perhaps the album's most accessible track, built around a hypnotic loop that somehow makes industrial noise sound almost tender. The song showcases JPEGMAFIA's ability to find melody within mayhem, creating something that's simultaneously abrasive and oddly beautiful.

"Thug Tears" demonstrates his range as both producer and provocateur, interpolating what sounds like a children's music box melody into something deeply unsettling. Meanwhile, "DD Form 214" – named after the military discharge document – serves as one of the album's most personal moments, with Hendricks reflecting on his military service over a beat that sounds like machinery slowly dying. The track "Macaulay Culkin" might be the album's strangest success, transforming what could be a throwaway reference into a meditation on childhood innocence corrupted by fame and circumstance.

But it's "Curb Stomp" that might be *Veteran*'s secret weapon – a track that somehow makes extreme violence sound almost cartoonish while never losing its edge. The production lurches between different time signatures like a drunk trying to walk a straight line, while Hendricks delivers threats with the casual tone of someone ordering coffee.

Four years after its release, *Veteran* has achieved something remarkable: it sounds even more ahead of its time than it did upon arrival. In an era where experimental hip-hop has become increasingly mainstream – with artists like Death Grips and clipping. finding larger audiences – JPEGMAFIA's debut still feels like a transmission from the future. The album influenced a generation of bedroom producers who realized that conventional song structure was just another rule to break.

*Veteran* also established JPEGMAFIA as hip-hop's most reliable unreliable narrator, someone whose political commentary cuts deeper because it's wrapped in layers of irony and genuine rage. His subsequent releases, including *All My Heroes Are Cornballs* and *EP!*, have shown growth and evolution, but none have matched *Veteran*'s raw, unfiltered energy.

This is an album that demands to be heard rather than simply listened to – a distinction that separates truly challenging art from mere noise. JPEGMAFIA created something genuinely new with *Veteran*, a work that proves hip-hop's continued capacity for reinvention. It's not always pretty, it's rarely comfortable, but it's undeniably essential. In a genre often criticized for playing things safe, Barrington