Taken from this week’s Future Pop mailer. Click here to subscribe.
Brockhampton are a hip-hop group who call themselves a boyband (“the best since One Direction,” according to their new song Boogie). I only heard of them about 10 days ago, but since then they’ve released a new album, Saturation III, and popped up all over my Twitter timeline. The group is made up of rappers, producers and even an Irish singer. Similar to Superorganism, they met online (through a Kanye fan forum), and moved from their original base of Texas to LA to live together and pursue music. Group founder Kevin Abstract was already somewhat known as a solo artist, and he’s the clear creative visionary of the group. Their interviews are chaotic and entertaining, but he still manages to get his key points across. They’ve released four albums since last year, and already have an obsessive audience attending their high energy gigs. Their lyrics take on issues such as rape culture and homophobia, and Kevin is very open about being gay. The members’ distinctly different styles suggest they’re likely to break out and forge their own careers like Odd Future and A$AP Mob, and maybe in years to come they’ll only perform together for reunion gigs. Perhaps my favourite thing about Brockhampton is that one of the members’ role is ‘webmaster’: if you have no rap or production skills, there’s still hope for you to join a hip-hop collective!