BROCKHAMPTON Summer: The Rise and Fall of a Boy Band

Who among us hasn’t wanted to change the world with lifelong friends you met on a Kanye West webforum in high school? While most of our attempts will fizzle out before they’ve even half entered the planning stage, BROCKHAMPTON got close to achieving it during their supernova of 2017- even though they couldn’t make it last.

Initially operating under the handle AliveSinceForever with several members that would be part of BROCKHAMPTON, the group primarily existed as an online entity that never really did all that much together. The difficulties of operating a 40 man band while in high school was a bit too much to manage and as a result members left, essentially ending the group and restarting as a more focused group.

The ‘leader’ of the group, Kevin Abstract, is a big reason that BROCKHAMPTON was able to get the ball rolling as quickly and as successfully as they did. Kevin is one of the best hook writers of the past decade, with an incredible ear for melody and skill for making earworms, his first two solo projects had established him as a fairly well-respected artist in the indie pop/rap scene. Without him, I doubt they’d have been able to stand out as quickly, and without his talent, there certainly wouldn’t have been as much to make them stand out musically.

American Boyfriend: A Suburban Love Story especially helped Kevin get his feet off the ground as a solo artist. Released independently in 2016, it got attention from most major media outlets and showed that Kevin was clearly a young artist that a lot of people had their eye on. With some assistance from fellow group members like bearface and Joba on the production and writing side, it’s actually a pretty decent album looking back on it; it’s easy to see why people were high on Kevin as a solo artist. “Empty”, “Miserable America”, and “Echo” aren’t just some of the high points of Kevin’s career, they are the high points of the pre-SATURATION era of BROCKHAMPTON.

Kevin wasn’t working solo, other members like Matt Champion and Ameer Vann (Kevin, Matt, Ameer, Joba, and Merlyn Wood went to the same high school in Texas and were part of the initial band which partially explains why they got the first crack at things) had dropped some solo tracks around that time as well. The group’s first main project of the before time, All-American Trash, was dropped in 2016 after a few singles the year prior. It’s alright. “INFATUATION” and “BEN CARSON” are good tracks. It’s very different from the collective approach of BROCKHAMPTON’s real albums, but there are some fun moments to be had.

Clearly, the group agreed, because after All-American Trash, the boy band centered themselves in their newfound home of Los Angeles, got to work on the next project, and reimagined much of their approach from top to bottom.

You have to give credit where credit is due and there’s no doubt that without Anthony Fantano the SATURATION trilogy would not have been even remotely as successful. He pointed them out early and had an extremely positive review (it got a nine, and was one of The Needle Drop‘s best albums of 2017) three days after SATURATION’s release and that brought a ton of attention to them. Even today if you google SATURATION his review is one of the first things that pops up.

Since, Fantano has been treated as an unofficial member of the group, was shouted out on a song, and his opinion on their albums definitely carries more weight than some of his other reviews. Before his review, Kevin was really the only member of the group with any eyes on him, and the group wasn’t buzzing much at all. Without that review, there’s a real chance SATURATION just gets a couple small reviews in DJ Booth and other blogs. Sites like Pitchfork got to it weeks late and, let’s be honest, only reviewed it due to the hype.

Fortunately for BROCKHAMPTON, they couldn’t have found a better champion. The Venn diagram between Fantano’s audience and the intended audience that BROCKHAMPTON wanted was a fucking circle. Fantano has given better reviews and higher scores but he hadn’t given a score that high to an act that both needed a boost in listeners and wanted the specific audience The Needle Drop could provide. It was a match made in music nerd heaven.

Like most commoners, I found out about the group from seeing the Fantano review, and even though I watched the first couple minutes of the video I wasn’t completely sure what I expected at the time, and I was blown away by hearing SATURATION for the first time. Much of the music made by BROCKHAMPTON sounds differently with distance and some emotional separation but SATURATION still holds up incredibly well.

They could not have picked a better opener than “HEAT”. The bass that kicks in as Ameer delivers the immaculate ‘I got pipe dreams of crack rocks and stripper poles’ captivates you immediately. The track delivers a raw aggression that only really appears here and sort of on the equally good “BUMP”, (although “BUMP” slows down on the hook and lets Kevin mellow things back out) that helped make it so you genuinely never knew what the next track could sound like.

A number of the best songs the group made are all here. The aforementioned “HEAT” is incredible, and so are the rest of the songs they released during the rollout of the album. “FACE” is wavy as hell and has an incredible summertime vibe, plus Joba’s hook is great. “GOLD” probably has my favorite hook Kevin has ever done. Matt’s verse sets the pace, Ameer follows it up perfectly, and Dom and Merlyn do a wonderful job on the backend and keep the track incredibly catchy throughout. It’s been the track with arguably the most staying power from the group. “STAR” is so goddamn fun. Hooks are normally the strength of BROCKHAMPTON tracks but this is just a straight-up rapfest with Dom, Ameer, and Kevin each getting a verse to rap as many references to movie/music stars as they can come up with. Kevin’s delivery of ‘Heath Ledger (RIP) with some dreads, I just gave my n*gga head’ is one of the most iconic moments the group has to offer.

As top-notch as the singles that frontload the album are, the rest of SATURATION is still excellent. The Alvin and the Chipmunks’d  vocals on “FAKE” work in a way I’ve never heard anyone besides BROCKHAMPTON pull off, and you gotta give so much credit to Kiko and Jabari for making the beat as captivating as it is because it could not have been easy fine-tuning a beat for those vocals. The vocal effects are excellent throughout, especially on “TRIP”. Ameer’s vocals sound like something you accidentally get when you fuck with the settings in Discord too much. Still works somehow. “MILK” shows how well the group could work on more intimate and personal moments as well. Merlyn spends much of his verse discussing how he felt like an outcast before dropping out of school, Dom’s outro on his mental demons is very moving, Kevin’s hook is great as usual, and Ameer’s verse has aged terribly. We’ll come back to this.

It’s hard to explain how fucking wild hearing “WASTE” was for the first time. SATURATION to that point had been an incredible pop-rap album with some wonderful moments where the group switches up and goes hard on certain tracks and as the album closes, instead of hearing one of the members of the group you’d enjoyed so far you get this random white dude going apeshit over a super mellow guitar track. bearface would become a focal point of the group, but he was only able to appear on one track for the first album and he blew his one shot out of the water.

I get that liking BROCKHAMPTON has fallen out of fashion, but you have to be trying to not find the first SATURATION to be a fun album. It still holds up very well and you gotta give ‘em some love for how impressively unique their sound and style was for the time period.

I’m in my mid-20s. By the time I was born, MTV had already begun its well documented decline. By the time I was paying close attention to music, it was just a place to crank out Ridiculousness episodes. Music videos haven’t really been a huge thing for my generation. There was a brief, literally months-long, period where BROCKHAMPTON videos were for the people that had jumped on the bandwagon.

SATURATION had pulled in an audience fascinated to see what they would do next, and when the “GUMMY” video came out it went to another level. You can tell they felt comfortable trying new things (and had a bit more money to make them with) without losing any of the perfect DIY aesthetics they had previously. Every video was at least partially filmed in their neighborhood, which helped give a very homey vibe to all of them, they just went for it with what they had and they did not miss. They also managed to use most of their best songs for the videos in the rollout for the second SATURATION just as they did with the first SATURATION. They paired excellent videos with great songs and by the time they were ready to drop the album, people were fucking hyped.

This may not be the consensus among BROCKHAMPTON fans, but I’ve always been drawn to the second SATURATION more so than the rest of the trilogy. The aforementioned singles that led up to the album are some of my favorite songs from the group ever. “SWAMP” has a top-five hook from them, Ameer’s pitched-up vocals sound great on his verse, and Joba delivers maybe his best verse. The beat by Romil and co. on “JUNKY” goes fucking nuclear. It’s creepy ass strings stick with you through some equally good verses by Kevin on being gay, Ameer on drug addiction, Merlyn on his family struggles, and a poorly aged verse from Matt about how he hates abusive men due to the abuser that appeared a minute and a half earlier. The sweet and smooth “SWEET” has an addictive flow to it that worms its way into your head instantly. They did not miss with the singles here.

There are plenty of insane highs throughout to match the quality of the singles just as there were with the first album. The mellow summertime vibes on “SUNNY” are perfect, Kevin’s delivery on the hook is so smooth, and bearface did an incredible job putting the track together on the production end. My favorite Matt verse is on “CHICK”, he killed that track out the gate, and Ameer follows up well with a nice Odd Future homage. “JELLO” is Chipmunk’d up to hell again, and it’s another moment that only they could pull off managing to perfectly pitch everyone at just the right notch to avoid being annoying. Even the beat races on the track. Joba gets a chance to shine on “TOKYO”, with a delightful poppier cut.

There are also a few moments that don’t feature the group operating together. “TEETH” is an Ameer solo track that lasts over a minute and it’s pretty good. Kevin gets his own short track on “JESUS”, where it’s just him and a quick appearance from bearface. You can tell that BROCKHAMPTON was definitely focusing on these two as their main stars and this would come back to haunt them, but we’ll get to that later. Just as he did to close the last album, bearface gets his own track to close the album. It’s a good song, but the ‘wow’ factor of hearing bearface for the first time is not there at all and even if it was, it’s not as good as “WASTE” was.

Relistening to everything I still think the first two are dead even in quality, it’s just a personal preference thing for me.

Their hype at this point was snowballing pretty rapidly, fans and critics were enthralled to see what would happen next. At that point, they already had two of the best albums of 2017 to their name, a third album that good would be one in the running for one of the best years in music. Unlike on SATURATION II, they switched up the formula a bit and almost surprise dropped the third album of the trilogy. Only one video was released, three days before the album itself came out, and a short film starring members of the group and featuring some music from the next album came out a day later. Turned out, changing the process didn’t impact a thing because this shit was a complete hit.

SATURATION II  is a great album, definitely their third best, but I do like it a bit less than the first two. I have the SATURATION trilogy in the Sam Raimi Spider-Man and original Star Wars category (translation: 2>1>3) of trilogies, but all are very good. It’s not that there’s anything particularly bad about the album that makes it my least favorite, it’s just that “BLEACH” and “BOOGIE” (two songs most people really like) don’t do much for me. I do love “HOTTIE”, it’s such a great pop-rap track, the circus feel of “ZIPPER”, and “RENTAL” has one of their best hooks. Deep cuts like “ALASKA” and “STAINS” are great too. I just like the first two albums more.

The feedback for SATURATION III was the best they had gotten for any album, did the best numbers, had the biggest songs, and is one of the most beloved by fans. It may just be me.

Regardless of how I feel about the third entry, the SATURATION trilogy is one of the most impressive things to happen in the past 15 years, music-wise. Most artists tend to release every couple of years, a few can release yearly, fewer do that and don’t drop in quality, and it’s very rare for an act to go through a full album rollout and follow it up with more than a track or a feature here and there. Maybe an EP or some leftovers on a B-side if they’re feeling bold. A whole ass second album in a calendar year is very rare. A third is nearly unheard of where there isn’t a massive quality loss.

The closest to it I can think of would be The Weeknd with his own star-making trilogy in 2011. Main difference being he capitalized on it. Future had some excellent years there in the mid-2010’s and he was on an album plus tape a year pace at worst. There’s an eight-month-ish stretch there where that man put out DS2, Evol, Purple Reign, and What A Time To Be Alive (RIP to the Drake and Future friendship). We didn’t know how good we had it. Beyond those two though, there really aren’t many that matched it besides Frank Ocean scamming Apple and ending his career with a bang.

Following the insane hype of the trilogy BROCKHAMPTON was obviously on the radar of every label in existence and were actively being pursued by the majors. The trilogy had done what it intended and won the group a large and very passionate fan base, and their signature style of music and visuals were incredibly alluring. Plus, putting out three albums that fast showed that they had a sound that could last and would keep the interest of fans. Getting a new deal and taking a step up from EMPIRE was inevitable – unfortunately, they probably couldn’t have signed a worse one. The deal got the group 15 million with RCA but needed them to release six projects in three years. Oof.

While solo albums would count toward the group’s releases owed, only one solo project ever came out, Kevin’s ARIZONA BABY. The plan was to release another album called Puppy in a few months following their new deal and the snippets and songs that they put out sounded great. And then the spiral started.

Ameer, one of the core members of BROCKHAMPTON and someone who almost certainly was about to be pushed as a solo act was credibly accused of sexual assault May of 2018. By the end of the month, he had been removed from the group. Ameer has not been apologetic since this happened but also has essentially admitted he did it and as a result, he deserved to be removed.

On the much less important side of things, this ended the possible release of Puppy. I imagine that there was no way to release it legally that would not have ended with Ameer being credited due to how much had been done, and resulted in them canceling several festival appearances and tour dates. They were frantically trying to stop things from getting worse and teased a sequel trilogy (and even put out merch for it) that never happened.

What I’m about to say next is not in defense of Ameer, he was a terrible human being who needed to be removed, but enough time has passed that this can be acknowledged – BROCKHAMPTON failed to replace him and they never recovered from the loss. The thing is that while Ameer was certainly the best rapper in the context of BROCKHAMPTON’s albums, it should not have been as catastrophic a loss as it ended up being.

Ameer was a good rapper with them, without them he has been garbage. Without him, that probably leaves Matt(?) as the next best rapper and they just did not have anyone that could clearly replace him. It was like an NBA team losing a great role player and just not thinking they needed to make any roster moves. Matt maybe could have been the guy for them to do it, he’s got the most charisma, personally, he’s my favorite rapper of the group, and he can do some poppy stuff at times but they clearly never wanted him to shift over. I like Dom but don’t think he could have taken over like that and Kevin already had a full plate.

They also could have potentially tried to find someone externally. BROCKHAMPTON was a big group. Lotta members, lotta collaborators, Ryan Beatty for example, is not in the group, been around since SATURATION IΙ though. With their big RCA deal and status, they could have gotten another rapper to help take some of Ameer’s workload off their hands. Instead of doing that or shifting Dom or Matt’s role they… did nothing. It didn’t work.

BROCKHAMPTON performing at the highline ballroom in 2017. Credit: José Alvarado Jr.

It’s also hard to ignore how hard they had internally been pushing Ameer as a star. The man’s face is on the cover of each of their first three albums. Musically he was not irreplaceable at all, and the fact they failed to replace him is all on them, and this blowing up in their face like that was a colossal misstep.

Nothing was the same for BROCKHAMPTON after Ameer. All live performances had to be adjusted to either remove his verses, have someone else do them, or focus on the new stuff – a problem when people didn’t love the new stuff. There was a missing role that the group never filled that they desperately needed. Group morale never fully recovered and there was clearly tension between Kevin and Dom. Kevin not being able to let it go did not help (I’m not sure Kevin wanted to remove Ameer – more on that later). Kicking out Ameer alone took a lot of wind from BROCKHAMPTON’s sails, but that struggle combined with the rush to drop their next album, iridescence, may have been too much to recover from looking back.

The shortest, easiest, and clearest way to describe iridescence is by pointing out that it’s an album that came out less than six months after Ameer was removed because you feel it almost every second. Nothing about the album was properly planned and executed. The SATURATION trilogy may have been a tidal wave, but it was a planned one with structured releases, incredible videos, and singles to build hype, and iridescence just kind of… happened. There was one music video (“J’OUVERT”. Great song. Terrible video.) and they dropped it the day before the album came out.

BROCKHAMPTON had so much goodwill built up before dropping iridescence that none of this impacted the hype for the album at first. It was the biggest album they’ve ever dropped, became a Billboard number one, and sold the most copies. On the downside, iridescence plummeted immediately off the list, had the legs of a non-MCU superhero movie, and in hindsight clearly left fans disenchanted.

I’ll be honest, there was a ton of cope surrounding iridescence. Besides their closing two projects, this is their worst album. There’s just something not quite right about it, it doesn’t land like it should even when songs work and some tracks like “TAPE” are just outright boring. The closer “FABRIC” is like two tracks glued together with a strange outro, and “NEW ORLEANS” is mid with an incredibly dated Jaden Smith appearance. iridescence is also bloated with a lot of short tracks and skits that don’t work very well. It’s not all bad, “J’OUVERT” is great, “SAN MARCOS” is a sweet bearface joint where everyone else performs well, and “DISTRICT” goes hard.

One of the things that make iridescence even more of a disappointment is that there were three singles they put out prior to it, “1999 WILDFIRE”, “1998 TRUMAN”, and “1997 DIANA” that were all genuinely great. The songs are almost certainly from one of Puppy, Team Effort, The Best Years of Our Lives, or one of the groups other abandoned tapes from that time and they’ve got the same juice that they had on the trilogy. Slight problem with Ameer being credited on one of them, so it’s unknowable how much he had to do with them.

While iridescence was a disappointment, Kevin’s solo album ARIZONA BABY that was released in between group projects has actually aged pretty well. It’s a very well-done pop album that’s reminiscent of how many of the Frank Ocean ripoffs sound but Kevin is just much better at it than most. “Peach” and “Georgia” are fantastic pop tracks and some of the more rap-oriented tracks like “Boyer” are also good. Plus it’s got some appearances from fellow members of the team to help keep the vibes strong.

In only eleven months after iridescence, BROCKHAMPTON was back with GINGER, their fifth album. Can’t say they ever stopped working hard.

It wasn’t enough to redeem the boyband in the eyes of their fans, but GINGER is a much better album than iridescence. The album’s got hits, and the group’s magic blend is there again in spurts. GINGER has a bit more of a cloudier sound than some of the group’s other work, and it’s their most lyrically mature album but it’s far from a dark album.

“BOY BYE” is such a fun track, it’s genuinely one of my favorites from the group’s entire run. I love that they let bearface try rapping some on here. He’s great on the bassy ass “ST. PERCY” (‘my dogs they bark Michael Vick on fours’). GINGER has their biggest track as well in “SUGAR”, it even got a remake with Dua Lipa (she wasn’t as famous then so it was probably a bit cheaper), and while it’s not my favorite of theirs I get the appeal. “NO HALO” works great for me as a Deb Never loyalist, and I would have liked her to get some more runway on the track to shine, but it’s a great track regardless. The best part of the album is Dom’s verse on “DEARLY DEPARTED”. This was the first time one of the members of the group had really gone after Ameer and how much of a fucking scumbag he was and Dom does it perfectly detailing how Ameer attempted to set up a mutual friend (in addition to the fact he’s an abusive piece of shit) and the fallout of Ameer refusing to own up to it.

It’s not perfect though obviously. For some odd reason, slowthai (speaking of pieces of shit) has his own track where he raps over a variant of the beat on “IF YOU PRAY RIGHT”. Either have him on the actual track or cut the verse. You’re adults. This was unnecessary. “VICTOR ROBERTS” is another track where they cleared out for an artist named Victor Roberts, one of Dom’s friends, and it’s just not a good song. Not gonna bash the guy ’cause as far as I can tell he stopped making music pretty quickly after this verse but it just doesn’t sound very well recorded or mixed and when bearface and Ryan Beatty come in towards the end there’s just a clear difference. There are also some average tracks sprinkled throughout, but still a massive improvement.

GINGER was a solid bounce back but the good vibes were short-lived. A few months afterward the world ended for a while, and isolating may not have stopped the group from making music (they did put out an album on Soundcloud in 2020, Technical Difficulty, meaning they never took a year off) but there was a definite impact on the group’s chemistry. There was a lot more individual work from non-Kevin members, and while this could have been a good sign of members trying to grow, it clearly was a sign that the writing was on the wall that things weren’t great for BROCKHAMPTON internally.

Their follow-up, ROADRUNNER: NEW LIGHT, NEW MACHINE, is my favorite of the non-trilogy albums. One of the best changes they made from their prior two albums is that for the first time since Ameer was booted out of the group, BROCKHAMPTON actually acknowledged the absence musically. Instead of just having the members of the group do songs without him and pretending nothing was different they actually got guys to fill that void – and high-quality replacements at that.

JPEGMAFIA comes in on “CHAIN ON” to help out and you can just hear things snap into place musically that hadn’t since 2017. Kevin delivers a great hook, Dom has a great second verse, the beat is great, and Peggy killed his verse (‘Same size as Dua Lipa, where the fuck my pen go?’). “BUZZCUT” is a fantastic track. It’s a Danny Brown song more than it is a BROCKHAMPTON track but that works perfectly here. FERG (FKA A$AP Ferg) and A$AP Rocky both show up on “BANKROLL” (Rocky has a few other moments throughout the album) and the vibes are great – it’s one of the most energetic tracks they’ve ever made. A few other appearances from both established acts and newer ones are sprinkled in here and there and it just sounds much more cohesive than their previous attempts without Ameer.

The non-feature tracks are nothing to scoff at either. “SEX” is one of my favorite BROCHAMPTON songs period, the beat is killer, it’s got some great verses from pretty much everyone and then fuckin bearface comes in and steals the track. I laughed so fuckin much the first time I heard him start speaking Spanish on the last verse, it’s such a good song. There are two versions of “JEREMIAH” on the album, I actually like the remixed version better, the vocal effects work much better for me but both versions go hard. “DON’T SHOOT UP THE PARTY” is another great track, just a great performance here from both Matt and Kevin. There’s another uncredited Rocky appearance on “COUNT ON ME” and he sets a great pace at the beginning of the track plus Kevin lands his white whale on the track by getting Shawn Mendes to appear on a BROCKHAMPTON track.

ROADRUNNER isn’t a perfect album, but it was a huge step in the right direction for the group and while I think ROADRUNNER was their best album post SATURATION, the steps they made forward ended up being all for not.

Beyond just being too late to salvage their music, it was clearly too late to salvage the group. At the start of 2022, BROCKHAMPTON announced that they were breaking up after doing a few remaining shows – including one final Coachella performance. As much as they wanted this to be the end, and as much as it would have benefited them for it to be the end, their ill-conceived record deal made things difficult. Two albums were still left on their deal and there have been countless groups/artists that ended up trapped on record labels in similar circumstances. There was no way they weren’t going to work their way out of it – for better or worse

Having reviewed The Family and TM for the website you are currently reading, I can confirm that both of these albums are not good. With that said, my opinions on them have changed a bit in doing this, and since I reviewed them.

I am going to talk about TM first even though it’s their last album. I have faith you will be able to understand why if you’ve made it this far. TM is terrible.

I was too nice to TM when I reviewed it. Outside of Matt’s verses on “FMG” and “NEW SHOES”, which are wonderful (‘green lamborghini look like Bulbasaur and his dad’) and bring a ton of life to a lifeless project (‘diamonds like water, I call em Cthulhu’), and a couple beats here and there this is a terrible album. Everyone is checked out, tracks like “DUCT TAPE” just sound like abandoned versions of old songs – which is what this album is. Before the group called it quits they had one last failed recording session and TM is the result of that. EP’ed by Matt, Kevin’s role reflects his diminished standing in the group (coming up next), and the album doesn’t work as a result. The only reason we heard this album is because RCA required two albums.

The Family on the other hand is simultaneously one of the messiest albums I’ve ever heard and one of the most fascinating. Reviewing it is (and was) next to impossible because it’s barely an album. Asking if it’s ‘good or bad’ is beside the point because its primary purpose (in addition to finishing their deal) is to give Kevin an opportunity to trauma dump on anyone he can get to listen.

I am yet to hear a more narcissistic album than The Family. Kevin spends this entire album unloading his thoughts on where his life is, where things are with the group, and how and why things ended all up like, only to clearly paint an image of himself being the one to blame.

With that said, this overwhelming self-centeredness kinda works at times. Kevin’s complicated relationship with his mother has been mentioned frequently on BROCKHAMPTON projects, and his working through that on “RZA” is genuinely rewarding, as is the ‘‘cause now I’ve lost my friends, but I fuck with myself’ bar. The reminiscing on “Boyband” works very well too, and the aggressiveness of “Big Pussy” is great.

And then there’s the shadow of Ameer hanging over this project. Kevin brings up multiple times how he’s talked with Ameer, spent time with him, and his regret over Ameer being kicked out. As garbage a human being as Ameer is there’s something kinda compelling about Kevin being willing to open up more about this. I’ve never been in a situation like this, and while I’d like to say I’d cut someone like that off completely, I’m sure it would be a complex emotional situation.

My biggest issue is that if you’re going to do this, Kevin cannot be allowed to be the only one to talk. Dom has previously written an entire verse outlining his much more negative feelings about Ameer. This is a BROCKHAMPTON album. What does someone else have to say?

Fans have gone through this journey with the entire group, and to close it off the only one who gets to talk is Kevin? That’s bullshit. Kevin lays out some of his faults, (I will admit this is to his credit. This could have been one the worst albums ever made if he blamed others.) such as cutting people’s verses and being too controlling of their music, teasing shit that would never happen, his issues with alcohol, and fights he got into with other members. Not hearing how they thought about any of this is a complete failure.

You *could* argue that Kevin’s narcissism was an artistic choice, but you would be wrong. Bringing in bearface, the only member of the group to appear on the album, to angelically absolve Kevin of his sins on “The Family” with ‘you tried to keep it alive, but I’ll be fine’, is genuinely disgustingly self-serving. It would be less off-puttingly self-centered if Kevin recorded himself masturbating on the mic.

The worst part is he actually manages to one-up himself on the closer track “Brockhampton”. The entire track is dedicated to ‘freeing’ the group, mentioning other members by name, even though he also points out how none of them will talk to him anymore because of Ameer. This album makes it abundantly clear that the group had broken beyond repair (largely by Kevin’s own hand) but you have to wonder if other members would get back in the booth if they had a do-over just to get Kevin to shut up.

Critical responses were slightly higher than one might have guessed looking back on it. The one that matters for a BROCKHAMPTON album was extremely negative, however – Fantano gave The Family a four and TM a three. Fans were not big on it either. Some liked The Family more, some liked TM more, and universally everyone agreed that the albums were an acknowledgment that the boyband was done, something most had already accepted by that point.

It’s unfortunate to watch it happen to an artist you enjoyed at the time, and especially one whose music was good and hasn’t aged completely horribly, but it’s clear that BROCKHAMPTON has moved into the ‘you had to be there’ category of artists.

Perception of the group had already diminished a good bit, they had clearly stopped being the influential and beloved force that BROCKHAMPTON started as, and I think it’s hard to argue that going out on as big of a whimper as they did helped. TM and The Family are not well-liked albums and we live in a ‘what have you done for me lately’ culture. Also, in all honesty, it’s a bit hard to blame people if their opinions were soured. Those albums are that bad.

It’s also clear that people just don’t like them very much anymore. ‘BROCKHAMPTON summer’ is described more like a bad fever dream by many of the people who were paying attention and those who weren’t have no fond memories to hold onto. The music from that time is still great, but it’s hard to make the case if no one wants to listen to albums from a group that broke up and won’t get to make more music. The rest of the non-trilogy albums are very of the time and it’s much easier to understand the lack of appeal to new audiences. No one’s gonna cope and pretend iridescence is good anymore and people are going to just take the albums for what they are now that they know there’s never going to be that resurgence many hoped they’d have.

One thing in their favor is that they have actually left a mark on the current rap landscape. I’m not sure grouptherapy.‘s collective approach, or potentially Paris Texas‘s sonic boldness exist without them, and some of rap’s most successful weirdos like Teezo Touchdown and his unorthodox delivery and vocals, definitely have a bit of BROCKHAMPTON influence in them. Their poppy sound was also pretty mainstream by the end of the 2010’s and countless acts that flow between the pop/rap/r&b landscape that Kevin occupies borrowed from them. Not so much anymore, but you can’t always get longevity. There have been an ungodly amount of musicians that got huge, crashed out, left no impact, and were gone quickly, and I can safely say that BROCKHAMPTON does not fall under that umbrella.

Now that the group has been broken up for over a year some of the members have begun to do their own thing musically, to varying success. Kevin will be able to have a decently successful solo career, mainly because he already had one, and his latest album Blanket is an interesting albeit very flawed attempt at a rock album. I would put money on Romil having the biggest post-BROCKHAMPTON career, he’s a wonderful producer and already has contributed to the latest albums from Arlo Parks, Brittney Spencer, and the aforementioned alt-rap group Paris Texas. Dom and Merlyn have put out new music. Ameer has also tried and failed at a solo career. Matt dropped a solo album, Mika’s Laundry earlier this year. They aren’t gone, but the members who hadn’t already proven to be able to work alone are facing an uphill battle to reestablish themselves.

Many musicians set out with dreams of completely changing their genre, becoming stars, and captivating audiences. Most couldn’t. It’s incredibly rare for an act to have both the drive, the talent, and the ability to pull in more than a niche audience, and for a brief window BROCKHAMPTON actually looked like they might be able to be one of those rare acts. They had a plan to become the best boyband since One Direction and by the time SATURATION dropped they were, but everything fell apart in those next months, and those next months after you succeed tend to be the ones that decide your fate, and they got every wrong roll of the die.

From the deal they signed to following up the trilogy, to handling Ameer leaving, things could not have gone worse. That’s what makes them so interesting.

Every sports fan can tell you about a time they watched a star player and were convinced they were going to be the one that saved their team. They probably won’t be as excited to talk about the dozens of other times they thought that and were wrong on a guy – but you wouldn’t be a fan otherwise. Being a passionate fan means being wrong a lot, having your heart broken, and unnecessary suffering for those few sweet, sweet moments where you’re right, and BROCKHAMPTON’s Linsanity run may be over, but it won’t be forgotten.