Review Summary: “I want more out of life than this”
BROCKHAMPTON have taken over the world. And they have no idea what to do about it.
They are a group lost and almost completely unknown to themselves at this point. It’d be hard to blame them, considering their meteoric rise to fame and the controversy that came with it. They had to contend with all of that and their own emotions, and Iridescence is the direct result. Now that I’ve said all that, I also want to bring up the fact that college is hard.
Ok, let me back up a second.
I’m currently about a third of the way through my first semester of my freshman year of college. And in all honesty, I’m having the time of my life. I’m hanging out with my friends every day of the week, and I finally feel like I’m actually able to live life. This is the dream, and really all I’ve always wanted. Companionship, and not to be in ***in’ high school. But there’s also a part of me that feels like I left everyone. My parents, my dogs, and my best friend in the whole world, my hetero-soulmate, are all still in the town I’m from, and I’m reduced to seeing them roughly once a month. And if I ever slow down at all, that can start to get to me. It feels like a ripoff. I’m finally actually happy, and I still feel like I’m not allowed to be happy. And that aside, just being at college is riddled with anxiety. I have to worry about staying caught up with work, studying for quizzes and exams, how much money I’m spending, maintaining relationships, etc. I feel like I have everything I ever wanted, and I still can’t hack it.
Point is, this album hit me like a freight train. It felt like everything all at once. All the emotions of the past few years compounded with the emotions of the past two months, and it might be the most cathartic thing I’ve felt in years. It felt like I was finally able to tell someone everything I felt, but it came out of someone else’s mouth. And none of this could’ve happened if this wasn’t one of the most well-executed hip-hop albums of the decade.
From top to bottom, this is simply masterful musicianship. It’s endlessly sharp, swinging between melancholy, occasionally even destructively emotional R&B cuts and dissonant, unnerving hip-hop bangers. It’s a formula BROCKHAMPTON have been honing for years now, and as far as I can tell, they’ve never done it better. They are at the top of the game, and all of these extenuating circumstances and the already fruitful musical foundation they’ve laid have led them to create what I think may end up being one of the best and most definitive albums of this generation.
It’s obviously too early to call that, but I am hard up to find a better alternative than Iridescence. It’s already had such an impact in me, coming at one of the pivotal moments of my life. And who knows?
I might actually end up being right.
