Saturation: an ode to the underdogs.
Brockhampton’s debut album Saturation is an ode to the bedroom creatives and the underdogs.
Brockhampton and their fiddling of the concept American Boyband is a jab at the glittery world of stardom, perfectionism and America itself. Subverting the glossy tropes that the pretty boy-band that comes along — it’s a team of university dropouts, high school rejects, burnouts; a group of outsiders that met on KANYETOTHE.COM. Beginning with their debut mix-tape ‘All-American Trash’ that I reviewed glowingly on my blog in my bedroom last year, the growth and attention following Brockhampton has accelerated within the short period as they face the brunt of stardom. Of particular interest as of late is Kevin Abstract, the poster-boy of Brockhampton who also dropped his sophomore album ‘American Boyfriend’ — a celebration of individuality — as well as the launch his paracosmic All-American Drive-In Prom in support of the album. After the announcement of Saturation, they announced the debut of their TV show American Boyband on Viceland and their radio app on Apple Music. Essentially, DIY culture is imperative towards the growth of Brockhampton and their close-knitted bond serves as an proclamation to the upcoming bedroom creatives who feel ignored or isolated.
The anxieties that infect the minds of Brockhampton is a motif throughout this album. ‘CASH’ is not the archetypal braggadocio tune where they flaunt their wealth, it’s a rigid and odd track wherein they express their anxieties towards a Post-Trump America. Each member allows each other to unsheathe their feelings into Saturation even if the result may seem to be a belligerent but elusive cacophony of laments and worries. The degree of their troubles range from different ends of the spectrum which we see nicely cohere into the track ‘MILK’, rapping over a labyrinthine-textured track lined with the concerns of representation, death and just merely being ugly.
They’ve grown a lot from the fruits of All-American Trash with more robust experimentation and with a blend of panache, starry-eyed and assertive lyrics; they’ve grown confident within their sounds, branching from all genres and time periods. ‘GOLD’ shows influences from M*I*A (they dedicated the official video to her), ‘SWIM’ shows a blend of folk with psychedelic overtones with whimsical lyrics about first loves, new outfits and Californian love while the production behind ‘CASH’ is a homage to 2001 N*E*R*D. They’ve dismantled the box that Odd Future couldn’t break; concomitant generalisations that fans typically force onto rap groups. It was that breach that allowed Brockhampton to transcend and be able to create Saturation in the first place: a quirky, liberating, unquiet and jovial piece of work.
Spending their adolescence in a world that decried and tried to strip away their authenticity and screaming out about the control and lack of it that American society provides for them. But in the chaos of it, there was an unmovable eagerness for Brockhampton to look back in a retrospective lens after all with the support of each other, a strong fan-base and a second album coming on the way. Brockhampton was testing the waters with Saturation. Now it’s time for them to expand, innovate and move an America that tried to push them to the fringes.
