From their humble origins on internet forums to their current status on towering billboards in Times Square, Brockhampton have always been more than a group. The boy band is a symbol of spontaneity, a brotherhood, and a success story unlike any other. As MTV’s PUSH artists of the first month of a new decade, they’re as natural and unprocessed a group as you’ll find in the music industry. And with five studio albums released in the span of just two years, it’s clear that Brockhampton are just beginning and that they have so much more to say.
One of the highlights of their introspective, cathartic fifth LP, 2019’s Ginger, is “Sugar,” a collection of confusion, love, slow heartbreak, and sweet memories. The opening chorus — “Spending all my nights alone, waiting for you to call me / You’re the only one I want by my side when I fall asleep” — kickstarts the vertigo-inducing ride that takes you through a crash course of different feelings. But though it might feel engineered that way, frontman Kevin Abstract told MTV it came from a place of uncertainty.
“For me, it’s alright to not really know what you’re doing. It’s alright to not have it figured out in terms of relationships and love and stuff like that,” he said, surrounded by Matt Champion, Merlyn Wood, Dom McLennon, and Bearface. “I feel like it’s nice to have a song that kind of speaks to that feeling of not really knowing what’s up. That’s my takeaway every time we perform it onstage.”
Elsewhere in their discussion, the five Brockhampton guys talked about the making of “St. Percy,” a fierce blast of emceeing that sounds like an alarm ringing off into the night until your ears grow accustomed to the startling sound. They recorded it because they discovered that they didn’t have “enough rap songs” when they were making Ginger.
Abstract dug a bit into his own verse on the tune and talked about how spirits influenced his delivery – two famous rap ones, particularly. “Sometimes I just want to capture a specific mood and spirit,” he said. “I wanted to capture the spirit of Lil Wayne and New Orleans and Master P. That’s why I said ‘Young Nola,’ because I was thinking about Lil Wayne.”
Take a look at Brockhampton’s one-of-a-kind performances of “Sugar” and “St. Percy,” then get to know them in the extended interview above.
