BROCKHAMPTON

GINGER

BROCKHAMPTON’s particular brand of magic comes from the careful balance of individuality in their unity. The tighter they are, the greater the music will be, and GINGER is testimony to that.

The boyband’s fifth album is short on potential hits but sees them move past the intense, dogged emotion of predecessor ‘Iridescence’, proving they're built for distance.

GINGER is a return to form for the BROCKHAMPTON boys, albeit a decidedly downcast one.

Less rascally and rambunctious than their prior output, Ginger found the crew delving deeper into heavy emotional territory, tackling mental health, depression, betrayal, and struggles with love, faith, identity, and substance abuse.

Since GINGER contains more fresh ideas than almost every great rap album of 2019 combined, once again it’s hard to pin down why it feels like such a relief when it finally ends.

Even the prettiest BROCKHAMPTON songs can feel cramped, but many of these songs, though each endowed with their little moments, are disorganized or inefficient.

While Iridescence proved that the group could survive Vann’s abrupt departure, Ginger exposes their creative limitations.

Each of their albums experiment with genre, but GINGER is all over the place, never really sure what it wants to be.

The self-proclaimed hardest working boyband in showbiz break new ground, but they're missing some of that old magic.

Unfortunately the final product doesn’t quite live up to the billing, with GINGER feeling like a confused, disjointed record, from a group that’s full of great ideas without the follow-through to fully realize them.

The 13-member “boy band” zips between sounds, signifiers and moods, usually staying on the surface but sometimes showing real depth.