The Boys In The Band

Brockhampton is not your typical 13-member genre-defying rap collective–slash–multimedia empire.

- Craig Jenkins

THE ROAR OF THE crowd when Brockhampton takes the stage is the kind of hair-raising, not entirely human sound you’d sooner expect to hear coming from the mouth of a dragon on Game of Thrones than from a room full of excited young hip-hop fans. Three thousand people have descended on Manhattan’s Terminal 5 on this brisk October night to see the 13-member self-described boy band perform songs from this fall’s Iridescence, the group’s fourth full-length album and first Billboard No. 1. Security at rap shows is usually a game of cooling tempers and discouraging smoking; tonight’s operation is more like a search-and-rescue mission. Over an hour and a half, the venue’s staff lift a dozen fans out of tight squeezes near the stage.

The show begins with the Iridescence highlight “Weight,” which opens on doleful strings as Brockhampton leader Ian Simpson, a.k.a. Kevin Abstract, 22, recounts how a relationship with a girl failed because he is gay. The song explodes into a drum-and-bass beat and continues to morph into new styles as different group members arrive to air what’s been troubling them. Like “Weight,” Brockhampton is a collection of voices that pop because of their differences (the group includes black, white, gay, straight, African, South Asian, Irish, and Latin members). There’s a little something for everyone in a Brockhampton song.