Out Now: Brockhampton declared themselves a boy band from the get-go and fans came running. The 14-person group lives together in a house in North Hollywood and is lead by Kevin Abstract and includes rappers Ameer Vann, Merlyn Wood, Matt Champion, and Dom McLennon. Producers Joba, Romil Hemnani, Bearface, Kiko Merley, and Jabari Manwa, webmaster and app designer Robert Ontenient, photographer Ashlan Grey, creative director HK, and their manager Jon Nunes. It’s been a year since they moved from Texas to L.A. and in 2017 they managed to release three studio albums, Saturation III being the conclusion of the Saturation trilogy.
They have surpassed one million monthly listeners on Spotify and garnered a growing a fandom of kids 13-19 which include but is not limited queer kids of color. Brockhampton seems to have picked up where One Direction left off as the same kids running One Direction fan accounts are simultaneously about Brockhampton. Self proclaimed “South side One Direction” and rightfully so as one of the most popular posts in the group’s Tumblr tag is “One Direction died so Brockhampton could live.” Their Love Your Parents tour crosses state and country lines across the US and Canada with three sold-out nights at New York City’s 1,000 person capacity venue Irving Plaza. What’s most shocking about the boy band is that they have released three albums within months of each other and announced a forthcoming album at each album release date.
However, when they unveiled the release date for SATURATION III they shocked fans with a fine print line that reading “The Last Studio Album by BROCKHAMPTON.” In a recent interview with Zane Lowe, BROCKHAMPTON revealed they were just trolling fans, and it will only be the conclusion to the Saturation trilogy and have announced their next album Team Effort which will likely come out before 2018 is halfway over. Their studio is in producers Romil Hemnani room and they are constantly working on something in their house they call the Factory. They have recently been picked up as the latest major project of Christian and Kelly Clancy who coordinated the rise of Odd Future. The group has reinvented what it means to be a boyband in 2017. Rapper Ameer Vann said in an interview “We make pop music. What is pop music right now? Hip Hop.” Its almost as if they’re making focus group tested and went off a checklist in their formulaic way they create a new track. At the velocity, they’re putting out hits, and it’s working out for them just fine.
The boy band is making music for this generation of teenyboppers and creating space for queer and fans of all races and sexual orientation. In Saturation III they manage to embody pop and hip-hop at the same time with lyrics like “Pretty sure I’m maniacal, but what do I know? I don’t know, all I know is what I see through my monocle/That and the telescope, keep one lens on the money flow,” Joba raps on ZIPPER. Their lines and composition have evolved with every album in the Saturation trilogy. While Kevin Abstract is the most public member, Ameer Vann is more of the star as his face has graced all three album covers and has the most striking raps. “Don’t let God see me, I got a lot of demons/And I been sleeping with ‘em/And now I’m tangled in the sheets/And sinking deeper with ‘em/I’m going deeper in it, find me drowning in it,” he raps in BLEACH.
Brockhampton has always made teamwork a high priority, so much so it will be the title of their next studio album. Dom McLennon has made vast improvements and is working just as hard as Kevin and Vann. While you still never know from Joba or Merlyn Wood they cohesively feel like a necessary piece of the puzzle that is the modern boy band.Matt Champion, Abstract, McLennon, and Vann, weave an elaborate web in and out of “JOHNNY,.” The conclusion of the trilogy is perfectly weaved, so much so that the end of the last track TEAM leads into the very beginning of HEAT, the first song in Saturation. While this might be the end of the Saturation trilogy but it is probably not the last we will see from America’s favorite boy band.
