BROCKHAMPTON Are You

Reviewing a BROCKHAMPTON concert is a vexed art—the thoughtful disengagement required is impossible to muster. Once Ameer Vann walked onstage shortly after 9 p.m. on February 5th, peeled off his surgical mask, and replaced his black jumpsuit for an orange one, you couldn’t be the guy in the corner, scribbling in a notepad. People were shrieking, leaping, and reaching desperately for the stage. Every second from that point on was a call to immerse yourself completely in sound and movement. It felt like an initiation into a community bound only by music and exuberance, open to all.

The five other primary performers of BROCKHAMPTON—Kevin Abstract, Matt Champion, JOBA, Dom McLennon, and Merlyn Wood—leapt out of the wings, all sporting eerily familiar orange jumpsuits. The general admission crowd, scattered throughout the pit only moments beforehand, immediately contracted into a 20-foot-wide block of flesh in front of the stage as BROCKHAMPTON launched into “BOOGIE,” the raucous opening track of their most recent album, “SATURATION III.” They had performed it four days earlier in Times Square for MTV’s “Total Request Live” reboot, and they brought the same world-conquering charisma to the House of Blues, the sublime unstoppability of a storm.

A year ago, you wouldn’t have expected this star power from BROCKHAMPTON. The 15-man “boy band” had one middling mixtape to their name, fittingly titled “ALL-AMERICAN TRASH.” Much of the group’s following seemed to be carryovers from mastermind Kevin Abstract’s nascent solo career. Then they had a show on Viceland, “American Boyband.” Then they dropped three albums in seven months. This prolificacy wouldn’t be so impressive if BROCKHAMPTON didn’t exhibit in half a year the kind of growth that takes most artists half a decade. They were a competent curio in June, with the release of the first “SATURATION” album. By the end of 2017, they had two flawless records under their belt. BROCKHAMPTON are like the Omnidroid: They learn constantly and adapt instantly.

The House of Blues stage was sparsely decorated: a traffic light, a few white swivel chairs, and a Simpsons sofa facing upstage. BROCKHAMPTON ignored these props for the most part, except during moodier songs like “FACE,” when each member would sprawl on the furniture until it was their turn to saunter to center stage and deliver a verse. As bare-bones as this setup was, the concert still managed to be a spectacle, in part because BROCKHAMPTON knew all the familiar elements of a concert and made them panoramic. You want a dramatic lull? Here are five minutes—comically long, in real time—of the group standing silently in the dark, waiting for the crowd to quiet itself. You want banter? Here’s Abstract announcing that BROCKHAMPTON are pivoting to stand-up comedy, then (justly) crowning Vann “Sexiest Man of the Year” instead of “all these basic-ass white people.” You want an encore? Here’s “HOTTIE,” “HEAT,” and four (four!) more iterations of “STAR.” And a moshpit? Here's a—actually, that’s pretty weak. Blame it on the audience.

Apart from this maximalist take on concert conventions, the biggest surprises were the individual performances. Some played out as expected: Wood and JOBA, the gleeful crowd favorites, strutted and twisted as the audience chanted their names. Yet Champion’s slacker charm, so arresting on record, was indiscernible onstage. This becomes less surprising given greater scrutiny, as he specializes in casually bobbing and weaving around the beat, permanently unruffled—his level of energy could hardly match that of his impossibly hyped bandmates. The same applies to Vann, whose sly, usually scene-stealing charisma barely registered among all the bustle. Meanwhile, McLennon, who seems to substitute pure technique for personality in the studio, dominated in person. Whether bounding across the stage, head whipping back and forth, or sitting at its edge, crooning as dozens of hands paw at him, he managed to access unforeseen stores of aggression and tenderness. In the most pleasant surprise of the night, Bearface, BROCKHAMPTON’s resident crooner and the least integrated member, had his own two-song showcase. Alone with his guitar, awash in blue light, he offered a five-minute glimpse of an alternate reality Ed Sheeran, one who’s actually interesting and doesn’t write about how his bedsheets smell.

Yet all this talk presupposes a knowledge and investment in BROCKHAMPTON, the kind that can convince hundreds of kids to stand outside the House of Blues in a line a fifth of a mile long, so cold that it was difficult to curl my fingers. What makes this profound love for the band possible is the ease with which one can identify with them. BROCKHAMPTON themselves cultivate this image of regular, underrepresented people, just like you and me—from the origin story (they purport to have met on a “Kanye To The” forum), to the taxonomy (they insist that they’re a “boy band” to “change the standard” for who can be in one), to the production of their content (all sourced from their shared home in Van Nuys, CA, aptly called “The Brockhampton Factory”).

Perhaps the most salient example of this unprecedented, boundary-breaking appeal is Abstract’s frankness about his sexuality, which feels revolutionary in an age when some of rap’s luminaries are delivering lines like, “I cannot vibe with queers,” or remarking that “the world is not right” after a fellow emcee comes out as gay. If that seems hyperbolic, here are some straight guys tripping over the “JUNKY” line, “He gave me good head, peepin’ out while the windows tinted.” While the presence of an openly gay man in rap is important and refreshing (“I do the most for the culture, n***a, by just existing”), so too is Abstract’s approach to the subject, running the gamut from harrowing to hilarious in as little as two lines: “Where I come from, n****s get called ‘f****t’ and killed / So I’ma get head from a n***a right here.” This aspect of BROCKHAMPTON resonates deeply with fans—the crowd at the House of Blues was at its loudest when reciting lines like “I told my mom I was gay, why the fuck she ain’t listen?” and “‘Why you always rap about bein’ gay?’ ‘Cause not enough n****s rappin’ be gay,” and Abstract’s quip “Tell your mom and dad that BROCKHAMPTON’s pushing the gay agenda on their children!” drew the most fervent cheers.

BROCKHAMPTON stress that you are valid, you have a voice, and you could be up on that stage if you wanted to. In other words, BROCKHAMPTON are you. They underline this point at every concert—in episode two of “American Boyband,” a laptop broke in the middle of a sold out Boston show, and Abstract had no instrumentals to perform over. He returned to the green room, frustrated, and mulled over his options. Do it a cappella? Sing over the mp3s? He went back out and told the audience, “I feel bad, ‘cause you guys aren’t getting to experience this tour like everybody else. So, I’m really sorry. This sucks, I know. I guess we could just treat this like a prom or something. Is it okay if I just play the album and hang out with you guys right here?” And he descended into the crowd. He swayed with his fans, he moshed with them, he sang along to his own songs with them. They huddled around him, hugged him, took selfies with him. Abstract took this crisis as an opportunity to reiterate his ethos, demolishing the fourth wall, breaking the barrier between performer and audience. He moved among his fans, equal to them.

There was a parallel incident at the House of Blues. For the penultimate performance of “STAR,” Abstract called all audience members with blue facepaint and/or orange jumpsuits to the stage. Once the crowd had emptied itself of everyone matching that description, a dozen others scrambled onstage, unremarked upon—it seemed like anyone was allowed up. As BROCKHAMPTON performed “STAR” once more, this assortment of random fans moshed among them joyfully. It felt like one more instance of euphoric egalitarianism, BROCKHAMPTON’s calling card.

—Staff writer Jonathan P. Trang can be reached at jonathan.trang@thecrimson.com.