and What Comes Next

By Gerrick D. Kennedy July 20, 2021

Back in March, Kevin Abstract, the young leader of Brockhampton, dropped a tweet ahead of the band’s latest album that left fans shook: “2 Brockhampton albums in 2021—these will be our last.”

It’s rare for a band to go out just as their popularity is surging. It’s rarer still that a band would be so at peace with the end.

It was only a decade ago that Brockhampton was born out of a simple vision. Abstract wanted to redefine what it meant to be an “all-American boy band,” to make something ambitious and bizarre and new. So he did what any kid growing up in the digital age would do and hit the Internet, posting a query on a popular Kanye West fan forum he frequented daily. About 20 guys responded, and in 2010, a band that called itself AliveSinceForever formed in Abstract’s hometown of The Woodlands, Texas.

The members would rebrand as Brockhampton (the name of a street that Abstract grew up on), and together they would go on to capture a generation of young fans with cross-disciplinary work in music and art that harnessed their collective ambition, business acumen, and DIY spirit. Brockhampton’s underground success, which culminated in a multimillion-dollar record deal with RCA in 2018, upended the way we saw rap groups and boy bands, with music that centered a crew of thoughtful, multiracial, and multinational young guys, both queer and straight, who were figuring out life in real time, together.

It’s the middle of May, a little after dawn in West Hollywood, and I’m huddled at a table in a soundstage parking lot with a few of Brockhampton’s members, including Dom McLennon and Jabari Manwa. Romil Hemnani and Merlyn Wood are playing with Wood’s schnauzer-poodle mix, Energy, while Abstract and Russell “Joba” Boring are inside getting styled for this photo shoot. Bearface, the group’s elusive, cherub-faced vocalist, put the dissolution of Brockhampton to me matter-of-factly: “We didn’t have that many more albums in us.”

The men of Brockhampton—now in their mid to late 20’s are understandably ready to move on from the whole boy-band thing. And they’re especially eager to tackle projects without having to compromise for their brothers in the band. “My goal for us was to be a rap group who called themselves a boy band,” Abstract says, “but now a lot of rap fans look at us like a boy band—or like soft music—so they write us off. We’re always overlooked in that way. And I want to be respected in the rap world more, ‘cause that’s the shit I listen to. It’s made me feel like, ‘Damn, people still don’t really view us as true MCs. True rappers.’ ”

That Abstract feels the group hasn’t been given a certain level of respect within the hip-hop community is surprising, especially considering that rap is the foundation of their music. Even when they flirt with pop hooks or make soulful R&B joints, Brockhampton albums have always been, at their core, rap. In that way, they capture so much of what today’s pop landscape looks and sounds like, as identity-fluid as they are genre-fluid. One of the criticisms often levied at Brockhampton is that their voracious appetite for new ideas has made

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their work feel structureless, as if they’re trying a million different things in a million different directions. The guys were already living together when COVID hit, which allowed them ample time to experiment and dial in their sound. During jam sessions, they would often try on new roles within the band. Producers would try singing and vice versa, which led to Manwa stepping into the spotlight as a vocalist for the first time. “I wasn’t feeling 100 percent happy with what I was doing as a creator,” he says, when I ask what prompted him to be more visible. “I knew there was another level, other stuff that I had to do. COVID, more than anything, forced you to be like, ‘Okay, you said you want to do this thing. What’s stopping you?’ ” That focus is partly why the group’s penultimate album, Roadrunner: New Light, New Machine, received critical acclaim upon its release in April. The record had been in the works ever since the completion of 2019’s Ginger, the album that pushed the band beyond cult status and into the mainstream, mostly thanks to the sunkissed R&B groove “Sugar.” The track exploded on TikTok and landed on the Billboard Hot 100, earning the band its first platinum hit and a performance on Ellen. That momentum made it easy for Roadrunner to come together, as albums usually do for the band: fast and furious, with ideas in abundance. And then the pandemic hit, and Brockhampton was forced to change course.

“A lot of the stuff we tried to do earlier in the writing process was poppier,” rapper Matt Champion says. “It was bigger hooks and trying to make just feel-good music.” Instead, the members decided to tone it down and focus on introspection, using the turmoil of the past year as raw material. “People are just going to be in their room taking in the music,” Champion reasons. “They’re not going to be out at the bar.”

Even though the album has far more guest artists— including A$AP Rocky, Danny Brown, and legendary R&B crooner Charlie Wilson—than any of Brockhampton’s previous releases, it is also the band’s most personal offering yet.

“This is the first album where I’m 150 percent in love with it,” says Hemnani. “I don’t really care what anyone says or thinks. For the rest of my life, I’m going to be able to look back on this album and be like, ‘I did everything I could have on that album.’ Like literally exhausted myself.”

In particular, the death of Joba’s father by suicide last year provided an emotional through line for Roadrunner. As a member of a group that traffics in raw honesty, Joba has always made himself especially vulnerable, often inserting candid dispatches about his struggles with mental illness into his verses. Working through his grief created the album’s searing centerpiece, “The Light,” as well as its closing track, “The Light Pt. II.” But the process was an understandably difficult one. For Joba, the heaviness of grieving for his late father on the record and talking about it in interviews was weighing on him to the point where he had to pretend that the album wasn’t actually out in the world. In some ways it was an act of self-preservation. “The day the album came out, I just got consumed by guilt and it lasted for like two weeks,” he says. “So I tried to drink the guilt away.… I put unrealistic expectations on this album, and those tracks specifically, in hopes that they would kind of expedite the healing process.”

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Joba’s eyes well up as he reveals that he needed to be hospitalized last year to treat his depression. He’s even seriously contemplating leaving music after Brockhampton disbands. “I’ve just been kind of stuck in this, like, existential loop since the album came out—and a lot of fear,” he says. “But everyone tells me that the reception’s been good.” Abstract says that with one more album left, the band will be in the studio for the rest of the year. (A world tour was pushed to 2022.) But he’s not feeling pressured by Brockhampton’s final bow. “I’m just inspired, really, to keep singing stuff and doing it while we have the time to,” he tells me. His mind seems to exist in a liminal state of calm—an attitude that appears to have permeated the rest of the group. “Everybody’s given their life for the last 10 years,” Hemnani says. “And at a certain point, people deserve to give their lives to themselves. So it feels like it’s time to let everyone just spread their wings and do the things that they want to do. Being in a group, I love it so much, but there’s also compromise. And I think everyone kind of deserves the shot to do what they want—no compromises.”

Abstract adds, “I feel like we’ve achieved everything. I feel like we’ve done more than we said we would do in a lot of ways. There are still goals that I feel like we have as a group that we haven’t hit yet. Certain awards or number one songs. Shit like that.…”

Hemnani interjects: “But it’s also like a goalpost that constantly moves because you have one level, and then you get a taste of what’s to come and it makes you hungrier.”

However, he isn’t sad or frustrated by the things left undone. Quite the contrary, actually. “I met all these guys when I was like 14,” he says proudly. “So to be 26 here, like where I’m at now? Fuck, I feel great.”

The impermanence of life can be frightening or freeing, depending on how you see it. And the same can be said about the moment they’ve arrived at—almost, but not quite, at the end. They’re still in the thick of processing their emotions and eager to discover what’s on the other side of this. constantly moves because you have one level, and then you get a taste of what’s to come and it makes you hungrier.”

However, he isn’t sad or frustrated by the things left undone. Quite the contrary, actually. “I met all these guys when I was like 14,” he says proudly. “So to be 26 here, like where I’m at now? Fuck, I feel great.”

The impermanence of life can be frightening or freeing, depending on how you see it. And the same can be said about the moment they’ve arrived at—almost, but not quite, at the end. They’re still in the thick of processing their emotions and eager to discover what’s on the other side of this.

On The Family, Kevin Abstract puts the boy band he created on blast, while the full group bows out with surprise final release TM.

There are some who, to this day, side eye the description of BROCKHAMPTON as a boy band, but Kevin Abstract and his ragtag collection of rappers, singers, producers, videographers and creatives have proudly owned the moniker since much of the world first discovered them through the 2017 Vice documentary series American Boyband.

And why not?

Hip-hop had never seen anything quite like them: multiracial, matter-of-fact straight and gay, equally adept at bar slinging and soulful singing, each member bringing his own skill set and distinct personality, with an audience that locked in on their favorites. They were capable of biting, rowdy tracks but also melodic songs bursting with love. It was a beautiful thing, and to experience them on record and (especially) live was to experience, yes, a boy band. But boy bands, by and large, aren’t meant to last, at least not ones with a breakout star in their ranks. Just ask ‘NSYNC.

BROCKHAMPTON is no more. As much as the believers hoped the group had many more years in them, the Angelenos announced in January that after a decade-plus and six studio albums, they were going on “indefinite hiatus” and that there would be one final album. Now, it’s here; in fact, two new albums are here.

Released on Thursday (Nov. 17), The Family is jubilant, sentimental, bitter, funny and confessional, but its title is somewhat ironic. Because as much as BROCKHAMPTON often operated as a family, a large (13 members, as of this year) and collaborative band of brothers, it was never a pure democracy. Kevin Abstract (Ian Simpson) formed it as a kid in Texas, moved it to Los Angeles and ran it — the creative buck stopped with him. (Throughout its history, he simultaneously released his own records. If he hasn’t taken off solo-wise at Justin Timberlake levels – yet – he’s well-primed to chart his own course.) And The Family is effectively an Abstract solo joint.

The rapper and singer recorded it in the spring, in the wake of their Coachella shows, in New York – a continent away from most of his bandmates – working only with BH’s bearface (Ciarán McDonald), member and in-house producer Romil Hemnani, and a collaborator, the producer boylife (Ryan Yoo). The lead vocals are all Abstract, and The Family is very much the frontman’s take on the highs, lows, thrills and disappointments of a wild ride. Suffice to say, Abstract pulls no punches.

It starts off celebratory and nostalgic. “Let’s take it back to when me and Ashlan was out front scheming, right on Jefferson” Abstract leads on “Take It Back.” Over a player piano, a high-pitched chorus, bounce and handclaps he recalls flashes of those heady days, when he asked on a Kanye West forum while still living in Texas if anyone wanted to form a band. (He recalled that moment in an epilogue letter shared on the same day.) “United we stand, divided we fall” was the mentality, Abstract recalls, but reality sets in as he lets us know what’s to come on the LP: “I had to save the truth for the last sh-t.” And the truth stings.

The Family is a glorious romp, veering from hardhitting spitters to string-filled soul and hip-hop, laced with pitch-shifting and samples that recall Yeezus-era Ye. But lyrically, there’s shoot-from-the-hip real talk. Over throbbing beats on “Gold Teeth,” Abstract confesses, “Nowadays all I want to do is party / All I made this is to get out the deal, partly.” And of BH’s famous camaraderie? “Don’t ask me if the crew is still talking,” he blasts. “Do we see each other? Hardly / Did we suffer too many motherf–king albuuuums? Probably.” In the letter, Abstract also admits to the members having moved in “separate ways, and focus on our individual careers and passions.”

“Money changes everything,” Cyndi Lauper famously sang, and it seems it was a familiar tale of quick money and fast fame – a 2018 deal with RCA worth $15 million – that was at the root of BROCKHAMPTON’s harmony going south: “I guess blowing up isn’t all that” Abstract declares over the deceptively sweet melodics of “All That,” contrasting the old days with the present, saying “now we hate each other just to hang out.” On closer “Brockhampton” he adds, “I wish I would have known that signing would change sh-t,” and recounts a falling out with bandmate Jabari Manwa that forever changed their relationship, saying the love has “never been the same since.”to when