Review Summary: "Something new to believe in"
Iridescence is about change.
At the end of 2017, Brockhampton was coming off one of the most prolific years in hip-hop. As the title suggests, their
Saturation trilogy took rap music circles by storm, earning the Los Angeles boyband a booming fanbase, a label deal with RCA, and a string of dates at the world’s largest summer festivals.
Then in May, the group’s path toward stardom was fundamentally altered.
Allegations of sexual misconduct against Ameer Vann—one of the group’s primary MCs—put pressure on the group to either separate themselves from one of their founding members, or risk receiving pervasive apologist labels, likely leading to a swift downfall. They chose the first, issuing a Twitter statement announcing Ameer’s ousting and a cancelation of the rest of their summer tour.
Nobody outside of Brockhampton’s inner-circle can decidedly say how much of a wound this inflicted upon the young stars, but if their teary-eyed set at Boston Calling is any indicator, I’d say the trauma extended to their core. Vann’s face was plastered on the covers of their last three records, his verses the highlights of their top tracks—like it or not, Ameer was a fundamental part of the group. Because of this, Brockhampton’s only option was to shed their past skin and reinvent.
And
Iridescence is quite a reinvention.
The most glaring shift on the record is more pronounced roles for the group’s lesser-known contributors.
Saturation showed us that Brockhampton’s principal voices were Kevin Abstract, Dom Mclennon, Matt Champion, and Ameer. While others showed their intermittent talents, those four were carrying the most weight. With Ameer out, the group was left without a personality to deliver the stone-cold flow that became his trademark, so they didn’t try to fill it.
Instead, they allowed the light to shine on both Joba—an off-the-wall personality with a voice that embodies chaos—and Bearface—the bestower of delicate auto-tuned hooks that fall in line with the best of late-90’s boybands. These two—along with Merlyn Wood’s untamed appearances—picked up the slack in ways that radically altered the past Brockhampton sound.
Right from
Iridescence’s opener, “NEW ORLEANS,” Joba’s dagger-like verse follows right in step with the other MCs’ and proves to be a staple through the record’s progression. On the grimy “J’OUVERT,” Joba pulls out the stops with ear-rattling yelps like
“*** what you think, and *** what you heard.”
On Bearface’s side, his vocals carry the hooks in a number of tracks, from soulful
“Sha-na-na’s” on ‘THUG LIFE” and a pitch-shifted hook on “BERLIN.”
The other glaring difference to be found on
Iridescence comes on the production side of the project. In the ten-day period spent crafting the record at the famed Abbey Road studios, Brockhampton’s in-house team of producers—Romil Hemnani, Kiko Merley, and Jabari Manwa—ventured into the experimental with a slew of grating industrial beats. They show themselves most notably on “BERLIN,” with blaring bass kicks that overwhelm the track’s close, and “DISTRICT,” with an incisive buzz saw-like synth line.
At the album’s darkest moments, the production is downright unsettling and seems to take influence from their experimental hip-hop contemporaries like Death Grips and JPEGMAFIA. But the record lends itself to a share of soft, captivating moments as well.
Two of such moments come back-to-back at the latter-half of
Iridescence and prove to be the emotional center of Brockhampton’s current musical vision.
The first, “SAN MARCOS,” is an ode to the group’s beginnings in the titular Texas town. A sparkling guitar line opens the track under emotionally charged lyrics from a number of members. After Joba’s verse that leaves off with the line
“I know that I’m changing,” a gospel choir brings the track to a gorgeous close with the repeated sentiment,
“I want more out of life than this, I want more.”
Right after comes “TONYA,” a single which was first performed on Jimmy Fallon in June. The song’s theme revolves around the negative side of stardom and its individual effects on Brockhampton’s members. Though he’s not mentioned, Ameer’s ghost hangs over the track in lines like Kevin’s
“I feel like brothers lie just so my feelings don’t get hurt,” and Dom’s
“A victim of Stockholm in my friendships and family.”
There’s no denying that Brockhampton took a hit from losing Ameer, but in their reconciliation as a group, they were given the opportunity to bring their sound to new territories—whether it be certain members’ more pronounced roles or the bombastic direction in production.
On the back cover of
Iridescence, there’s a small set of print that reads: “FROM THE TRILOGY ‘THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES.’” If this record is indicative of the first step toward Brockhampton’s reinvention as a creative project, then
The Best Years of Our Lives just may have some truth to its name.
