Calling themselves a boy band is one of the many quirks and provocations of Brockhampton, a hip-hop group of Texan origins that actually resembles a multifaceted artistic collective. It's led, albeit unofficially, by rapper Kevin Abstract and brought to life by other rappers and producers, but also designers, photographers, directors and managers. The collective has updated the age-old saga of the journey from the underground to success for the era of forums and new digital creativity: having met online, they built a self-sufficient reality capable of fueling a cult following on the web. Brockhampton also share the internet's speed. From their debut with a mixtape in 2016 to the end of their story in 2022, they built a dense discography dominated by a trilogy of albums released in just six months, closed out by a pair of works released just 24 hours apart. Their rapid rise within alternative hip-hop took them from independent production to a major label, from a self-proclaimed boy band identity to an alternative group with even experimental traits. Their experience allowed them to express a wide spectrum of sexual, ethnic and national identities, helping to lead hip-hop out of its suffocating cages. In some ways, Brockhampton are the opposite of Death Grips: both offshoots of a hyperconnected, borderless world, they represent its colorful, emotional soul rather than its anguished, hyperviolent one.
Clifford Ian Fernando Simpson is 13 years old when he decides to look for other members to form a collective. He puts out the call on a forum dedicated to Kanye West. A few already-known users join in, one of them even living on the small island nation of Grenada. There are also some school acquaintances, collaborators who had already come aboard in other roles, and music fans who joined through other projects. Some are from Connecticut, one is from Northern Ireland. In all, the AliveSinceForever collective numbers something like dozens of members. They'll release only one EP, but it's enough to kick off the story of Brockhampton.
The collective settles in Texas, partly for university reasons. Kevin Abstract grows frustrated with the lack of internal coordination and decides to disband the group in order to form a new one, named after one of the streets he lived on in Corpus Christi. They release a track in 2015, and follow up a few months later. In March 2016 the band makes the mixtape All-American Trash available for free. In retrospect, it's a rough, immature collection, well below their best work. Still, it's enough to get them noticed by Pitchfork and a handful of particularly curious listeners. The colorful, lively hip-hop they present from the brief opener "Encino" onward, beefed up with distorted bass on "Ben Carson" and softened into nocturnal r'n'b on "Michigan", is already full of creative flourishes. The pop-rap smoothness of "Infatuation" and the sensuality of "Palace" come together, in a way, on "Home", a lush, surreal and psychedelic slice of r'n'b. In the melancholy of "Cotton Hollow" it's easy to spot the more emotional side of Kanye West, the one from "808s & Heartbreak":
If I die alone, then I probably deserve that You can turn your face up but don’t act like you ain’t heard that
To close things out they even venture into rock territory with "Poison", driven by electric guitar, before wrapping up with the jazz-rap of "Lost In Love". The mixtape's strength lies in its variety, boosted by a handful of short tracks placed mid-tracklist. It's only the beginning.
The saturation trilogy: 2017
Right after releasing the mixtapes, the collective relocates to Los Angeles, once again shifting its lineup. It's the start of an intensive period of work that will lead to the rapid-fire release of three companion albums in 2017: Saturation, Saturation II and Saturation III. True to the logic of the artistic collective, the entire production is handled in-house. To celebrate — and to promote themselves — there's a flurry of music videos, an appearance in a docuseries, "American Boyband", and even a feature film directed by Kevin Abstract himself. Live shows follow too, organized into dedicated tours.
Saturation opens with the explosive horrorcore of "Heat", anxious and distorted, with bursts of deafening noise. It's a fitting way to introduce an ambitious debut album bent on surprising the listener song after song. The pop-rap nursery-rhyme hook of "Gold" repeats itself while the arrangement keeps revealing new layers and mutations. The trap of "Star" pairs Kendrick Lamar with the cartoonish style of early Injury Reserve. "Boys" plays with voices, piling them up into a cacophonous choir, while "Fake" uses a helium-pitched one, comically shrill and robotic. It's hard to keep up: mainstream hip-hop is chewed up and spat back out in extravagant, unstable shapes on tracks like "Bank", "Trip", "Milk" and "Bump", even edging close to the moving poetics of Mac Miller on "Swim". The melancholy guitar decorating "Cash", the soul sweetness of "Face" and the even more sensual "Waste" speak to an album full of nuance, comfortable reinterpreting even wildly different musical styles. The wealth of collaborators orbiting the band's core echoes the variable geometry of Gorillaz, though starting from a clearly hip-hop blueprint far more rooted in American music. The result is a stimulating, at times disorienting listen. Those sensations only intensify across the following chapters.
Saturation II is an assault on the senses. The infectious hook of "Gummy", with synths chirping like vintage Dr. Dre, and the aggressive hardcore-hip-hop of "Queer", which turns at times into something genuinely poignant, lead into the robotic nursery rhyme of "Jello", worthy of Daft Punk teaming up with JID. A tangle of soul voices opens "Teeth", a mere 80 seconds of free-form psychedelic power. The relaxed "Swamp", the scorching "Tokyo", the disorienting "Chick" are all further variations, packed with arrangement details that keep them engaging even after repeated listens. The aggressive "Junky", with a breathless, anxiety-inducing rap and a beat that's initially drumless and decidedly spectral, sets up an Eastern-tinged vignette like "Fight", first animated by acoustic instruments and then swallowed whole by an oppressive digital magma. Every so often a song stays a song for its entire length, as on "Sweet", which seems to have the makings of a hit, however atypical. It all closes with the soul-rock ballad "Summer", languidly framed by electric guitar.
Twistin’ me up like licorice Think I need someone who can handle it Ice on my boys and my wrist is fixed I don’t need nobody tryna give me shit
Almost as if the band grows bolder with each album it rapidly adds to its discography, Saturation III comes across as even more brazen, schizophrenic, deconstructed. Swept up by the explosive "Boogie", the distance between creative and immediate collapses entirely: for Brockhampton, you can be pop-rap and still escape cliché, even if that means going overboard with horns and circus samples, as happens here.
It's a huge party, one that updates the lesson taught by OutKast. The run continues with “Zipper”, “Johnny”, “Stupid”, “Bleach” and “Alaska”, rivaling the mutant style of JPEGMAFIA and Vince Staples but favoring the more colorful and fun side of things. A minimal, electronic pop ditty like “Hottie” is a gem in this sonic rainbow and represents its sweetest side, just as “Sister/Nation”, an unstable and dangerous blend, embodies its most unhinged and crazed fun. This time the closing is two-faced: a deluge of electric guitars called “Team”, with a voice singing in a sea of reverb, that turns into a sensual, dreamlike r'n'b.
The most obvious criticism one could level at the trilogy is its sprawl. It would be naive to expect 45 masterpiece songs released in just a few months, but it's equally clear that some trimming would have made the project more focused and easier to pin down. Still, the peculiarity of this triptych is its sheer abundance: styles, stories, moods and references pile up, profoundly different from one another, held together by a remarkable ability to keep the whole thing from veering into incomprehensibility or self-indulgence. In accumulating references, detours and upheavals, Brockhampton still retain a readability, an immediacy that is necessary given the flood of heterogeneous tracks. Welcoming them triumphantly is, of course, the online music-nerd subculture, especially the hip-hop-oriented one. Their disruptive creativity is ideal for the overstimulated users of an ever-faster, ever-more-frenetic web, where music must always be new and exciting. In the years when hip-hop overtakes every other genre in listening figures, Brockhampton combine respect for the classics with a distinctly youthful urge to upend the rules.
More experimental on a major label: 2018
“Team Effort” was supposed to be the follow-up to Saturation III. Brockhampton announce it just days after releasing their third album, then postpone it and change the name to “Puppy”. They sign with a major for a deal rumored to be worth $15 million for six albums to be released over three years. One of the collective's members, Ameer Vann, is removed after being accused of sexual misconduct. The name changes again, to Iridescence. It will debut at number 1 on the Billboard chart, a major but short-lived success. In Kevin Abstract's words, the album is inspired by Kid A by Radiohead. Be that as it may, it was largely recorded at the legendary Abbey Road studios and pushes the trilogy's creativity one notch further. Above all, the relaxed, playful mood has now become a far more emotionally slippery amalgam: if the various Saturation albums represent the energy of youth, here we're in the anguish and strength of early adulthood. The tracks swerve, sometimes abruptly, offering few handholds on first listen and conveying a multiplicity of intentions. The impression is that they could move in any direction, that the next song might go somewhere completely different. A spread of possibilities, then, handed to us like a bouquet of blazing-colored flowers. The frontal impact of “New Orleans” recalls the dynamic, aggressive hardcore of Run The Jewels, while “Thug Life” returns to the more emotional Kanye West, with a melancholy piano. It's a seesaw that continues with the explosive “Berlin”, itself split into parts: one a distorted beat, one minimal melodies, one adolescent soliloquy. The helium-pitched soul of “Something About Him”, the powerful, bouncing beat of “Where The Cash At” and the more elaborate “Weight” — several songs in one, complete with drum'n'bass accelerations — keep stunning the unprepared listener. A peak of this unpredictability is “District”, frantic rap with industrial jabs. The frenzied “J'ouvert”, the obsessive, anxiety-ridden “Vivid” and then, song after song, right up to the closing, maximalist, vaguely unsettling “Fabric”, keep piling on heavy doses of variation, detour and hybridization. It's an atypical trajectory: on a major label, Brockhampton use the greater resources at their disposal to release their most experimental and eccentric album. Through episodes like these, hip-hop presents itself as a universal language for the popular music of the era, ambitious yet accessible.
Alternative compromises: 2019-2021
Ginger (2019) changes direction. If the previous album unleashed their wildest, most creative side, here the collective offers more linear, fundamentally pop-rap songs. That said, it's still their own way of interpreting the style, with great variety and a bit of that magic dust that made them unique. Generally calmer and often melancholy, the album opens with the acoustic-guitar pop-rap of “No Halo”, finds a hit in the emotional r'n'b of “Sugar”, and rediscovers some unpredictability in “Boy Bye”, with a plucked melody climbing in the background.
Spendin’ all my nights alone, waitin’ for you to call me You’re the only one I want by my side when I fall asleep Tell me what I’m waitin’ for, tell me what I’m waitin’ for I know it’s hard but we need each other Know it’s hard but we need each other
Eminem would be proud of “If You Pray Right”, a comic beat with supersonic rapping, though the ending reveals their barely concealed experimental streak. By contrast, a cluster of calmer, even dramatic tracks (“Dearly Departed”, “Ginger”, “Big Boy”, “Victor Roberts”) risk sounding less original and often shallow, but at least frame another side of their musical expression.
This stylistic compromise unfolds across a period that also includes the Covid-19 pandemic, which the collective addressed through livestreams titled “Technical Difficulties Radio”, later posted for free on their website and just as quickly pulled from it. An off-the-cuff project born in a moment of global crisis, it was above all a way to fill the wait for the next album, Roadrunner: New Light, New Machine (2021). The collective opens up more than ever to outside contributions. While guests had appeared here and there in previous chapters too, this time they're essential to the album's unfolding. Danny Brown, JPEGMafia, A$AP Rocky, A$AP Ferg, SoGone SoFlexy, Charlie Wilson, Baird, SSGKobe, Shawn Mendes and Ryan Beatty inject fresh creativity into a collective worn down by years of extreme prolificacy. The result is a mature album, in many ways the culmination of their career. More cohesive than ever and less tilted toward pop-rap, it opens with alt-rap bombs like “Buzzcut” feat. Danny Brown and “Chain On” feat. JPEGMAFIA.
There's still room for more mainstream hip-hop moments like “Bankroll” feat. A$AP Rocky & A$AP Ferg, “Old News” feat. Baird and “Don't Shoot Up The Party”, but they're tempered by majestic prog-rap cuts like “The Light”, with electric guitar and psychedelic flourishes, and “Windows” feat. SoGone SoFlexy, a nightmare where r'n'b and West Coast sounds collide. The glorious melancholy of “What's The Occasion?” is that contradictory emotional amalgam typical of maturity. The closing is even more emotional, with “The Light Pt. II”, a confession shut away among whispers and adorned with a gospel choir.
Ginger and Roadrunner: New Light, New Machine strike a balance between the more alternative, creative and unpredictable spirit that emerged in the early albums and a new artistic identity, more mature and coherent. Greeted with some severity by critics, they're less disruptive than their predecessors but solid examples of alternative hip-hop.
A double ending: 2022
In January 2022 the collective announces its imminent end. The Family is an album that only partly belongs to Brockhampton. Only some of the members take part in the project. Far less ambitious, it's a farewell that often circles back to the chipmunk-soul of Kanye West, from the opening “Take It Back” onward, or to his more aggressive, deafening style as on “Gold Teeth”. Run The Jewels would be proud of “Big Pussy”. The 90s-style pop-rap of “All That” is inexplicable unless read as a track released simply to clear out the drafts before wrapping up the career. That theory is also consistent with the handful of short, partial sketches that pad out the tracklist. The closing “Brockhampton” seals the farewell with a bittersweet reflection.
I miss the band already Fuck that, I miss my old man already The kids broke up the band already So this one right here for the fans, already
So there was no real need for TM, released the following day, even if the excuse might be seeing the collective together one last time. Back to an expanded lineup, they release a batch of songs that had been shelved while awaiting a conclusion. It's a grab-bag containing the cocky trap of “FMG” and the sugary pop-rap of “Animal”, the blatant danceability of “Man On The Moon” complete with synths, and a potential melancholy hit in the whispered house-rap of “Goodbye”. The suspicion that TM exists to fulfill a contractual obligation is well founded.
Brockhampton deserved a finale worthy of their peaks, and instead they leave us with a double farewell of songs still in need of polishing and unclear artistic directions. It's the consequence of a lightning-fast rise and a career as thrilling as it was impossible to sustain for more than a few years. After a preparatory mixtape, the Saturation trilogy helped redraw the boundaries of hip-hop for an audience increasingly uninterested in macho clichés and all-too-predictable storytelling. Their openness to different stories and sensibilities goes hand in hand with a multi-stylism that isn't afraid to go pop when it suits them. Iridescence pushed that language to its schizophrenic, unpredictable peak, a direction partly reversed on the two following albums. But with Roadrunner, the experience effectively reaches its end: the rest is a long goodbye made even more bitter by tracks that too often sound like demos.
Ride the wave of great music
Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.
This article is an English translation of the original Italian text, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.
Milestone
