Amid a room of sweat-soaked shirts and hoarse voices, “Brockhampton” performed in the Middle East Downstairs on Tuesday night as part of their first official tour. The Los Angeles-based, self-proclaimed “boy band” has been taking the Hip-Hop genre by storm over the past few months, and drew a very energetic and diverse crowd.
At its core, Brockhampton is the culmination of an ad-hoc group of creatives who decided to join together and simply do what they loved. Much of the current band can be attributed to the online forum “KanyeToThe,” where Ian ‘Kevin Abstract’ Simpson—Brockhampton’s primary member—recruited a few members of the group as well as gathered a small following. This was also when they began to develop their unique aesthetic. The group currently lives together in Los Angeles, California, where they record and produce music and film their music videos.
The band has spent 2017 working on the “Saturation Trilogy,” consisting of three full-length albums and a large number of music videos to accompany them. With “Saturation I” and “Saturation II” being released on June 9 and Aug. 25, respectively, the group is creating and releasing content at a rapid pace, providing the fuel for their meteoric rise in acclaim and popularity.
Tuesday night’s show was a clear indicator of this. Despite being a fairly underground group, the vast majority of the crowd rapped and sang along to every song. Largely performing varying hits from their two latest albums including “BUMP,” “FACE,” “SWEET,” and “JUNKY,” Brockhampton managed to control the crowd’s energy with the finesse of seasoned musicians.
Members Merlyn Wood and Romil Hemnani had a combined seven stage dives, each garnering a larger response from the crowd than the last. As the group left the stage at the end of the show, they were immediately followed by a deafening chant demanding they perform “STAR,” one of their most popular songs. Naturally, Brockhampton returned to perform it—four consecutive times.
Photos and story by Alex Melagrano
