The BROCKHAMPTON boys are looking for a way forward. After releasing four albums in quick succession and forcing out their best rapper, Ameer Vann, when he was accused of sexual misconduct, the group experienced severe burnout and anxiety. So, they took a six-month hiatus to both regroup and disperse. Abstract put out a solo record and the band’s $15 million RCA deal ushered them out of their communal North Hollywood house and scattered them across Los Angeles; they now meet up at a central home studio, called the Creative House, to record. The album that came of all this upheaval is GINGER, a compelling but disjointed record loosely about self-fulfillment. Even the prettiest BROCKHAMPTON songs can feel cramped, but many of these songs, though each endowed with their little moments, are disorganized or inefficient.
GINGER was, somewhat oddly, born out of a burgeoning relationship between members of BROCKHAMPTON and the actor/performance artist/fledgling rapper Shia LaBeouf, who now leads a weekly group therapy session at Abstract’s place. As Abstract tells it, LaBeouf became something of a guiding light. “We want to make a summer album,” Abstract told GQ in June, a sentiment that has been confirmed by his group mates in recent days. He specified: “Feel-good. Not too sad and like, ‘Oh, our life sucks,’ just more like, ‘Just enjoy what’s in front of you.’”
It’s unclear whether that was a troll or a misunderstanding, but GINGER is not a feel-good summer album. There is little on this record that suggests enjoyment of anything. The mood can be boiled down to a dejected Joba verse on opener “No Halo”: “Been goin’ through it again/Been talkin’ to myself, wonderin’ who I am/Been thinkin’, I am better than him/In times like these, I just need to believe it’s all part of a plan/Lost a part of me, but I am still here.” Being here—present and accounted for, momentarily clear of the debilitating fog that is dysthymia, and usually in between traumas—is what classifies as a win on GINGER. The album is murky and often lovelorn. Pry open any verse and you’re likely to find a lyric about being neglected or counted out or abandoned at its center. It isn’t as pessimistic, jittery, or moody as iridescence but it’s still rather cheerless.
That cheerlessness isn’t a problem, in and of itself, but the writing gets bogged down by the narrow perspective. At the root, BROCKHAMPTON is a group of misfits explaining all the different ways they don’t fit in. That’s at least part of the appeal: they speak to many brands of loneliness. But they’d benefit a lot from, instead, figuring out what they have in common. This unwillingness to find some semblance of comfort in the bond they’ve made, to reconvene as an oddball in-group, feels like a huge source of their dysfunction as a unit. They are constantly trying to piece together broken personal histories amid massive success, like decorated detectives obsessing over an unsolvable cold case.
Romil, Jabari, and the rest of the BROCKHAMPTON production team keep the crew laced with weird and ear-bending beats that shift, split, or branch out enough to accommodate the myriad of performing styles. In the early stages of GINGER, things all click into place: the trilogy of haymakers at the outset—“No Halo,” “Sugar,” and “Boy Bye”—makes it seem like the crew has unlocked its full potential. The bristling cameo from UK rapper slowthai is a nice touch, too. But as the album wears on, things come undone and songs splinter into pieces.
When it comes to the BROCKHAMPTON creative process, the group has always had too many cooks in service of eclecticism. But there are moments on GINGER where it seems like each artist on a given track has their own song in mind. The title track is a broken array of vocal performances that nearly becomes grating. On “I Been Born Again,” a hookless parade of verses, the writing is cluttered and confused. Kevin used to be their star, his gravity pulling everyone into rotation around him. Even on the worst of the Saturation trilogy, there was a sense of alignment, if not continuity.
Just about everyone delivers a standout performance that’s striking at one point or another, and many members seem to sense that they’re growing (“My attention to detail is in scale with classic impressionists,” Dom McLennon raps on “If You Pray Right”). It’s just that they’re growing apart, at least musically. There is little here that suggests holism. They like to call themselves a boy band, but boy bands are, at the very least, in sync.
