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Music Review: Pat McAfee’s Debut Album Finally Answers the Question – “What if Jelly Roll Was Somehow Worse?”
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I’ve always liked Pat McAfee because he’s a fellow West Virginia Mountaineer who wore the uniform during the most successful era in football program history. He played on the teams that beat Georgia and Oklahoma in BCS Bowl games and is part of a heralded group that includes Pat White, Steve Slaton, and Owen Schmitt.
McAfee is now enjoying immense success as the current face of ESPN, alongside Stephen A Smith. Both guys have huge personalities and understand the entertainment side of television. They’ve turned the traditional media world upside down, for better or worse, and they’re good at what they do.
But sometimes these guys become overexposed, and do things they don’t need to do, like Stephen A leaning into politics or Pat releasing a music album, titled The Diary of a Polarizing Figure:
Alright. This is some sort of country rap, which I guess works since McAfee is from the Pittsburgh area, went to WVU, and played for the Colts. You don’t necessarily have to be southern to be country, or drive a truck, or lose custody of your children, which seems like the target demographic for this album. With this debut, McAfee now has the market cornered on college football fans whose wives recently left them. Roll Tide!
The album opens with Pitbull and a Mugshot, in which McAfee sings:
“Wake up in the morning
Smoke and coffee, no cream
Scroll the feed, see some tweets
All some crazy ass scenes
Trying to get to some money
With our Powerball dreams
‘Cause when the bills start stacking
We all feel the heat”
It’s strange to hear McAfee rapping about stacking bills, as if he came up on the streets of Memphis with the Three 6 Mafia. The guy was an NFL punter who kicked field goals and extra points in college. Now he’s making huge money as a Barstool alumnus doing contemporary former-athlete media for ESPN. It feels off-brand or perhaps antithetical in a topical sense.
He goes on to “sing” this in the title track, Polarizing Figure:
I’m so confused and conflicted
About this life that I’m livin’
Everything that I do
Some pumped and some shitting
You see, there’s some who will ride
And some who wish I would die
So, every new sitch, is it alright? Or on sight?
The premise of this entire album is one that’s hard to accept. What is there to indicate that McAfee is a “polarizing figure?” Because he’s non-traditional media? Because he’s a disruptor? Because Aaron Rodgers goes on his show? Maybe his recent appearance with President Trump checks the box, otherwise it’s is a classic case of “some people like a celebrity and some people don’t.”
It’s less about polarization, I think, and more about sports fans needing a McAfee break. He doesn’t have to be EVERYWHERE, doing ESPN and WWE and taking over your social media feed. He doesn’t have to be making music. You get these guys who break into the scene and do really well initially, and then maybe there’s too much, too soon, and people start to get worn out. Jason Kelce is a good example of another former athlete who has a strong personality and natural chops for this, but if you go into the comments of any Kelce video clip, you will absolutely see somebody say, “alright that’s enough Jason Kelce for now.” It doesn’t mean they no longer like a legendary former Eagle, they just become weary when he branches out into EVERYTHING, like making that karate short film last year.
Maybe McAfee conflates this fatigue with polarization, and has therefore channeled his feelings into music that speaks to typical blue collar themes with some introspective lyrics on finding fame and making it big. It’s the old “me against the haters” mentality. But I don’t think people hate McAfee so much as they’re tired of him. And they don’t really know the McAfee who came from a typical Pittsburgh suburb and excelled in sports; they just know the guy who is currently being shoved down their throats by ESPN. They know him as this super-rich talking head who is receiving the push to end all pushes while Disney lays off people like Karl Ravech. Fair or not, you’re seeing a lot of that these days, so maybe there’s a disconnect between opinions of McAfee and ESPN, and how McAfee himself interprets these opinions. Perhaps the point of the music is to reintroduce himself as this blue collar Yinzer, and set the record straight.
As for the music itself, it’s completely unremarkable. It’s schlocky genre hopping, only it takes the worst of country, rap, rock, and whatever. It’s Florida Georgia Line if they were somehow less talented. There are some decent guitar licks here and there, but there is nothing of note otherwise. If this was AI, which it apparently is not, it sounds like the prompt was, “write me some tracks that Ole Miss fans would listen to after hitting their wives.” Or, maybe it’s a collection of tracks that Jelly Roll left on the cutting room floor, and then McAfee wrote lyrics to revive said tracks, which should have remained dead.
So this is not a very good album. Maybe a 2.3 out of 10. But it’s a lot better than Imagine Dragons and anything that came out of the 2011-ish “Stomp/Clap/Hey!” scene. If you had to pick between Mumford and Sons and Pat McAfee, you would pick McAfee 1,000 times out of 1,000.
And, to be fair, you typically give props to people for taking a risk and trying something new and working outside of their comfort zone. Good on Pat for giving this a try, I guess, but sometimes less is more, and somebody in his camp needs to tell him to say “no” every now and then.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com