Brockhampton’s The Family is an odd duck. A concept album about the hip-hop group’s breakup, it sounds more like the product of a therapy session than a collection of songs intended for the general public. What’s more, with de facto frontman Kevin Abstract handling all of the lead vocals, it plays out more like a solo album—a statement from the rapper about his bandmates—than a, well, family affair. “The group is over without being on an album…The label needed 35 minutes of music,” Abstract raps on “Big Pussy.”
From that track to “The Ending,” very few of the songs here are accessible. The Family is full of sped-up soul samples from the likes of Willie Hutch and James Carr, pitch-shifted to disorienting effect, with sampled voices falling out of time with Abstract’s verses. Harshly distorted 808s and sudden bursts of white noise mar songs like “Basement” and “Southside,” while others build minimal backing tracks out of little else but percussion and looped vocals.
Even The Family’s more tuneful offerings feel like ironic bait-and-switches, with sudden shifts in tone and texture, and melodic passages or vocals replaced with noise or spoken-word samples. The album is so fragmented and so determined to forsake easy pleasures, with most of the songs hovering near the 90-second mark, that it comes to suggest a hip-hop version of Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention releases from the 1960s.
The idea that fame is far more likely to complicate (or create) problems in an artist’s life than lead to happiness is well-trod ground. But it’s rare to hear an entire album devoted to the level of self-criticism on The Family. On “The Ending,” Abstract declares, “This is the most corrupted vision/I turned my friendship into a business into an empire.”
Abstract owns up to his own feelings about his band’s shortcomings on the title track, lamenting that he became spokesperson for over a dozen members. On the closing track, the aptly title “Brockhampton,” he admits, “I wanted something that felt more real…I wish I knew the day we signed that it would change shit.” For better or worse, The Family may, paradoxically, be Brockhampton’s most honest and adventurous effort since their debut.
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