Brockhampton Ranked!
With over 10,000,000 monthly listeners on Spotify to date, BROCKHAMPTON are one of the most up and coming acts in hip-hop right now. The self-proclaimed boy band was formed in Texas back in 2010 originally under the name AliveSinceForever. The creative collective consists of 13 members, led by Kevin Abstract, made up of rappers, singers, producers, songwriters and visual artists with roots all over the world. With such a large and talented team, they have released a number of tracks, both individually and as a collective, ranging in style massively, which is only to be expected when coming from such a diverse group of people. Despite being one of my favourite artists of all time, their work definitely varies in quality and certainly varies in taste, I have given myself the difficult task of ranking their albums in order of preference solely based on my opinion. I have limited knowledge when it comes to musical technique but I have conferred with others in order to give my best insight into the albums and my favourite tracks on each, so without further ado, in reverse order, we have…
ALL-AMERICAN TRASH, 2016
As their first album, it’s not likely to be their best but don’t get me wrong this is still a pretty strong album, it gained the respect of a lot of rap fans and for sure got them to where they are today. The album displays their diverse sound, it’s almost too diverse in that it’s not fully cohesive and didn’t quite manage to link the voices and varying meanings for each verse by each member nearly as well as they do now. There’s definitely a lack in identity but of course with time as we have gotten to know the boys, they’ve developed personality in their writing and delivery, and we’ve grown to recognise it. I won’t lie to you, I haven’t properly listened to this album more than once because it just doesn’t compare to the other work in their discography for me, there’s a few songs I vibe with though. INFATUATION is the fourth track on the album and definitely my favourite, it’s all about the bars in this song, in contrast we have track 8 PALACE, which is a bit more wavy and vocal based. BEN CARSON is another stand out track for me because despite me not enjoying it enough to have it in my playlists, I think it’s definitely the track on the album that really creates the bh watermark, it is clear they have wit but it also helps to show their awareness of the rap game, and more importantly their position in it as a ‘boy band’ with variety.
iridescence, 2018
This was the piece of work that followed on from the Saturation trilogy - so it had a lot to live up to. After the release of singles 1999 WILDFIRE, 1998 TRUMAN & 1997 DIANA, which was their first work following the departure of Ameer Van from the group, I thought this project was gonna be The Shit. These singles were a sigh of relief that the boys still had it even without one of their most talented members. 1999 WILDFIRE, my favourite of the 3 features one of Kevin Abstracts best hooks and the tempo and pace changes to introduce bearface’s vocals are incredible and are present on 1998 TRUMAN as well. Back to iridescence however, which is more of a depressing album, with tracks like WEIGHT, TONYA and THUG LIFE really capturing this. The band even said this themselves, but the album isn’t a total loss, in the first track we hear a refreshing feature with Jaden Smith which is an unusual but welcomed collaboration with an artist not within the collective. A stand out track for fans was J’OUVERT where we actually get to hear Joba in full range, he’s even on record saying he didn’t give his all in the first saturations so it’s nice to hear him in full power. Despite my low ranking of this album it actually features my favourite track by the band - SAN MARCOS. The track is named after their place of origin in Texas and isn’t as rap focused as most of their other tracks, in fact the song even features choir vocals that create a powerful ending, the song is widely regarded as one of their best.
SATURATION, 2017
The first album in the 3 part project and what a way to start! Before the full album release the band released HEAT, FACE and GOLD as singles which are 3 of the 4 stand-out tracks for me so it’s a little sad there wasn’t more hidden gems for when the album was released. HEAT starts the album off quite intense, moving to GOLD’s infectious hook demonstrating what Kevin Abstract does best, the track features lots of flow changes, all of which merge well together. My favourite track on this project however is STAR which is the track to follow, it’s practically seamless between members’ verses, the instrumental totally takes a back seat and the lyrics are the real focus of the song. The track is a perfect demonstration of how current the collective is with pop culture references left right and centre. A strong start is followed by quite a dead album until FACE which is still one of their top 5 listened to songs on Spotify. The Skits featured in the album are very much skippable and add essentially nothing to the project.
SATURATION 3, 2017
As we get further up in the ranks I have so many more songs I want to discuss! This album opens with BOOGIE which is essentially about the same thing HEAT was in SATURATION but instead of this angry ‘let’s burn it to the ground’ approach BOOGIE is about letting go and this song definitely allows listeners to do just that. One of their most well known tracks BLEACH appears on this album with a sort of waterlogged instrumental and a feature from Ryan Beatty, who is a longtime collaborator and features on most of their projects, he steals the show with his gut wrenching hook. Speaking of stealing the show, Matt Champion has his shining moment in the track RENTAL which I urge you all to add to your shower playlist, right now. The project also features stand out tracks like HOTTIE and SISTER/NATION on which we get to hear Roberto’s voice and a perfect example of how they use altered vocals to really make their tracks stand out. What’s quite interesting in this project is the last track TEAM because it helps to connect the trilogy, it’s outro is the same as the intro of HEAT, the first song on the trilogy. And what I didn’t even notice until my boyfriend told me when I was compiling notes is that all tracks in SATURATION have 4 letters, all in SATURATION 2 have 5 and all in SATURATION 3 have 6, bar the last track TEAM which has 4 to take it full circle back to the first SATURATION. Mad.
GINGER, 2019
This album slaps. We jump straight into the album with the first banger: NO HALO. It’s a somber start to the album, and was my favourite of the singles they released. This leads into SUGAR which is pretty much the exact same vibe but is their most listened to song on Spotify which - considering how vast their discography is - speaks for itself. The track was also remixed with Dua Lipa, sounds good, right? It had real potential but I was so disappointed I don’t even want to talk about it. The album all seems to link together with the reoccurring instrumental motif we hear in a lot of the tracks, definitely in I BEEN BORN AGAIN, IF YOU PRAY RIGHT & BOY BYE. All of which I love. As soon as the brass instruments kick in during the first verse of IF YOU PRAY RIGHT I’m hooked, all the way though to the end where they kind of lose me with the outro, it’s different in the music video though so give that a watch! In BOY BYE what I really thought stood out was everyone’s contribution was short and sweet but the baton is handed over smoothly between members. VICTORIA ROBERTS is a track with a nice little story, the guy who raps on this tune is a friend of Dom and has a harrowing story of how he could have been a rapper of his own accord but life got in the way, this really meshes beautifully with the theme of struggle the album portrays, it’s also just really sweet that the boys feature him on this really beautiful song. Last but not least is the album title song GINGER which the more I listen to the more I love. I’ve not seen many people raving about it so I think it has polarising reviews, but I certainly like it.
SATURATION 2, 2017
By a long shot, and since my first exposure to the group, SATURATION 2 has been my favourite album. Aside from the leap in the quality of production, the project quite simply just has the most songs on any of their albums that I adore. The album has such a strong start, GUMMY, QUEER then JELLO. The beat switch up is so lit and just makes the entire track. It doesn’t stop there though, following is TEETH, which despite the controversy surrounding Ameer, is his shining contribution to the trilogy, it is entirely his song and probably more topical now than ever. And if 4 bangers in a row wasn’t enough, TEETH is followed by SWAMP, one of the singles they released before the full album. There’s a few bops between like JUNKY, another of the singles, and SWEET. This is one of their most popular tracks to date, the use of the chipmunk and backing vocals add personality to the song, it’s a cathartic middle finger to their oppressors. But one song that really gets me, and gets no where near the attention is deserves, is GAMBA. A truly beautiful song. The album couldn’t finish more perfectly with their Prince inspired song SUMMER, it’s a perfect close to the album, “you really feel the sun coming down as you listen to it,” my boyfriend put so eloquently.
This wasn’t an easy choice and I had to listen to these albums back a couple times to decide between some of them but in all fairness to BROCKHAMPTON there’s something for everyone in their music. Such a diverse selection of artists bringing their perspective and varying meanings and subjects to each track, but the subject isn’t even what’s important. Each song they create transmits a feeling in it’s listener, and that’s what really stays with you.
