Album review: with Iridescence San Marcos’ Brockhampton leaving imprint on modern Hip Hop
Formed in San Marcos, Texas the currently L.A.-based Brockhampton is a Hip Hop deluxe crew consisting of fourteen members, each delivering a unique style and flow, conveying a varied range of personality. Recently signed with RCA records, the group has made huge waves in the rap world. Last year they crushed the stage at Jimmy Fallon, headlined the Agenda Festival in Long Beach (CA) and collaborated with established rapper/producer Jazze Pha.
With their fourth, Iridescence, the group’s growth and maturity are more evident than ever. Like watching a classic television show hit a groove in its second season, Brockhampton has uncovered an unmistakable harmony in their most recent release. It debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 Album chart. It is refreshing to hear such diverse sound flow so seamlessly together, cohesively forming sounds that mingle and build upon one another, playing off strengths, without feeling like a collaboration record. This crew is a unit of extremely talented MCs delivering 90s-style throwback flows, fused with production that emulates early 2000s underground Hip Hop.
Brockhampton’s lyrical style ranges from the most gritty, old school, east coast rap, to that of cleaner, Bay-area underground wordplay. With several sing-song tracks with real hooks, Brockhampton is a sonic stew capable of moving a crowd on the dance floor, banging on your system during a road trip or just kicking back, losing yourself in the music through headphones. The music lends itself to all those scenarios much like the record spans multiple styles of Hip Hop.
The album begins with “New Orleans,” an uptempo headbanger that vehemently transcends the simple wordplay and rhymes of typical, modern, fast-paced Hip Hop tracks. Between the piano-laced, auto-tune-fused slow sounds of “Tonya”, which morphs into a heavy-hitting, drum-laden emotional ballad, reminiscent of a philosophical plea, for something better in the hometown titled “San Marcos,” each member of Brockhampton feels like a integral, personified piece of the puzzle. Listening to the album from start to finish is to hear the group mature and evolve as artists and as a collective.
There is a heavy emotional context to the album. It develops steadily, gaining traction and building off of implied tensions and explicitly-stated stresses of growing up in a world full of so many false, self-inflicted pressures. Coming into one’s own is the prominent thematic context of Iridescence, a coming-of-age opus from the upstart Brockhampton which makes us eager to hear what’s next for the group.
