Brockhampton
Enmore Theatre, September 26
★★★★
Joba brings manic energy to the Brockhampton ‘family’.
Keeping up with Brockhampton is an exhausting business: the personnel, the personalities, the prolific output.
For the uninitiated, here's the mythology: this 13-piece hip-hop collective coalesced around group leader Kevin Abstract in 2015 after meeting on a Kanye West fan forum online. Some members rap and sing, some produce the beats, some do the graphic and web design, some take the photos, some manage.
Since then, this self-proclaimed boy band has released a mixtape, numerous singles, a trilogy of albums last year (Saturation I, II and III), and last week album No. 4, Iridescence, to broad acclaim – and that's just the first in another planned trilogy. Phew.
Brockhampton don't so much push the boundaries of hip-hop as ignore them. A multi-racial, international outfit, they rap and sing variously about being black and gay, depressed, socially awkward and anxious, as well as living hard on the streets, over skittering beats, Middle Eastern flutes, Gaelic tin whistles, slurred samples, police sirens, g-funk keyboard worms, pounding drums, tinkled pianos, acoustic guitars – whatever.
On this night, leader Kevin kicks things off solo on Weight from the new album, before the breakbeat kicks in and the five other "performing" members charge on stage to join him.
Like any boy band worth its salt, there's someone for everyone: shy Bearface, manic Joba, cool cat Matt, sensitive Dom, impish Merlyn, alpha-gay Kevin.
Members trade verses on each song, rarely singing collectively; for all the talk in interviews of Brockhampton being a family, there's a surprising lack of camaraderie on stage, as if each member is in their own self-contained bubble.
Yet the whole is greater than the parts, and for the next hour-and-a-half the band and a heaving all-ages crowd ride a rollercoaster of energy that peaks with stompers such as J'Ouvert and Star, ebbs with ballads Tonya and Honey, then climbs ever higher with lung-bursting crowd sing-alongs to Bleach and San Marcos.
The pounding banger Boogieacts is a high-energy closer with a mosh pit to match, a sea of sweaty, jumping teens sprawling across the dance floor.
Hip-hop has been around for close to 40 years and like any musical genre it needs new blood to reinvent and reinvigorate it. Brockhampton are breaking old-school conventions, bringing fresh air from the underground.
In that respect they're the most interesting, and most punk, boy band on the planet.
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