Veteran

Veteran is the second studio album by American rapper Barrington DeVaughn Hendricks, known by his stage name as JPEGMafia. It was released on 19 January 2018 by Deathbomb Arc and Republic Records. A music video for "Baby I'm Bleeding" was released on 1 December 2017. A second video was released on 18 May 2018 for "Real Nega". On 12 September 2018, a video for "1539 N. Calvert" was released. The album was released to widespread critical acclaim and was featured in numerous year-end lists; in 2019, Pitchfork listed it at number 171 in their list of best albums of the decade. Recording Most of Veteran was recorded while JPEGMafia was living in Baltimore and was mixed and mastered when he moved to Los Angeles in mid 2017. He recorded around 120 songs and set aside 19 for the album. The album was originally intended to be released on 22 October 2017, his 28th birthday. JPEGMafia attributed the album's aggressive and chaotic nature to "other shit" he experienced in Baltimore, and was able to fully understand it when he became level-headed in Los Angeles. JPEGMafia calls Veteran an exercise in editing, in that there were a lot of moments he took out and some that almost didn't make it, and that he "reeled it back" more on Veteran compared to earlier records. "Libtard Anthem" originally featured JPEGMafia doing a verse, but removed himself from the song in favor for Freaky's guest verse because he felt that "he summed it up perfectly". "Dayum" was originally much longer, consisting of 3 different beats that he made, before being edited down to 1 minute 26 seconds because it was "not needed". "I Cannot Fucking Wait Until Morrisey Dies" was also much longer, with "an intro and a whole other part" before being whittled down to 1 minute 27 seconds. Music and lyrics Matthew Moyer of Orlando Weekly labeled Veteran as the most freeform hip-hop album ever, even more so than the works of Death Grips and clipping. The instrumentals are an amalgamation of noise and glitch styles in the vein of Tigerbeat6 and Mille Plateaux, as well as punk rap, noise rap, trap, and "space-age R&B". JPEGMafia's vocal performance is mostly abrasive (in a manner David Turner compared to MC Ride) but ranges from aggressive to calm to crooning. These alterations happen abruptly all within "Thug Tears", beginning with the rapper singing, then rapping in staccato notes before rapping smoothly and singing again.