COVER STORY | Kevin Abstract Finds a New Lane
The former Brockhampton bandleader talks reinventing himself on Blanket a year after his beloved group’s disbandment, making a record that sounds like the music he grew up on and how his confidence stems from giving his fans an authentic portrait of himself.
Photo by Arseni Khachaturan
When I hop on the phone with Ian Simpson, the vocalist who parades the globe as Kevin Abstract, he’s just returned to Los Angeles from a trip to Texas. Abstract was born in Corpus Christi and has spent a lot of days in Houston. On this trek, however, he was visiting Austin and, since he never spent much time in home state’s capital growing up, it felt like he was somewhere new. Much is felt similarly about Abstract’s new solo album, Blanket—a rock-based project that exists in the same orbit as his previous rap work but, through experimentation and ambitious new sonic bedrocks, it stretches its legs into something fresh and unfamiliar. Inspired by Modest Mouse, Alex G and Sunny Day Real Estate, there are practically no remnants of Abstract’s beloved former band, Brockhampton—who broke up in 2022 after releasing their final two albums, The Family and TM, the former of which was, really, a glorified Kevin Abstract solo record made to fulfill a record deal that arrived as a one-man examination of a collective’s chaotic ending.
Two years ago, Abstract proclaimed that his next solo record was going to be one that bypasses reflection and emotion and gets people to move. What he did come up with, though, was a collection of songs that are, all at once, patient, methodically tender and, succinctly, inversive to the kind of dance-centric, upbeat tracks that such a proclamation of movement would likely point towards. It’s less spacey than a rap record; much more indoctrinated with the DNA of intimate chord progressions and rock ‘n’ roll modernism. Drenched in the same ethos as his job as a consultant on HBO’s Euphoria, Blanket is a 13-song survey of vibes. “I’ve been trying to make a solo record over the past two years, and nothing I was making was making sense to me, emotionally,” Abstract says. “It wasn’t music that I would play back, be excited to show a friend or be excited to listen to on my own in the car. Something just happened where I had new energy around me—new people, and they were encouraging me to make the stuff I actually listened to growing up. That removed the pressure I was putting on this project, because I thought I had to live up to some idea of what people wanted from me. I, somehow, managed to escape it.”
It’s true—Blanket rebels against any preconceptions a listener might have about what a Kevin Abstract album is supposed to sound like. Four years ago, ARIZONA BABY was the MC’s grand, candy-coated and sun-soaked stroke of pop-rap that blissfully paired bombastic beats with dainty, sweet verses. It was a project that arrived much more focused and sturdy, a welcomed pivot from Abstract’s work with Brockhampton—likely because there were so few voices that needed time in the spotlight. Back then, he was working with Jack Antonoff, Dominic Fike, Ryan Beatty and others. On Blanket, Abstract has widened his coterie of players, calling upon Harry Styles’ songwriting team Kid Harpoon and Tyler Johnson, keyboardist John Carroll Kirby and Alex G guitarist Sam Acchione, among others.
A week before Blanket’s release, I was shuffling around my house, doing chores while spinning the record. It’s the kind of assembly of songs that you can get lost in, but it’s also the kind of work that can make keeping busy feel easier. What immediately jumped out was the closing track “My Friend,” a collaboration between Abstract, Kara Jackson and MJ Lenderman—two artists who each made (or helped make) two of the best albums of 2023, Why Does The Earth Give Us People To Love? and Rat Saw God, respectively. Perhaps you, too, never imagined the worlds of Brockhampton and Wednesday syncing up in such a way, but it’s all there, bright and sublime—and it’s a mark of Abstract understanding that his fourth studio album was going to be not a mark of the rap and R&B he’s made his calling card, but a fusion of indie rock, fuzzy alternative and moody, synth-heavy electronica.
“Once I locked in this direction and knew this is the genre I wanted to explore for an entire body of work, I realized that I should probably reach out to who I would consider to be some of the best in this lane,” Abstract explains. “I reached out, just to see if they liked the music I was working on, and then the collaboration just naturally happened.” With Jackson, he was struggling to write a second verse for the song, so co-producer Romil Hemnani asked her to write one (she wrote three, and one of them found its way into the song’s bridge, “The way I think about you, my friend”).
Abstract and Hemnani have worked together on every project (Brockhampton albums included) since MTV1987, and the musical chemistry between the two artists is undeniable at this point. “He’s heard and seen me develop over the years, since I was 17,” he says. “There are similar sensibilities that we share, and I think it’s easy for us to start on something without me even saying what the direction is. We’re super locked in, but maybe it’s because we do spend a lot of time together. If we’re not listening to the same stuff, we’re showing each other stuff.”
Abstract is an artist who is always tuned into presentations and concepts. When teasing the finale of Brockhampton, he was very affixed to Twitter, particularly, offering follow-backs and giving snippets of insight into the live, as-it-goes process of his own band’s curated demise. The rollout for Blanket was an interesting cycle, too, as he opted to drop a single weekly during the month leading up to the album’s release. The title track was the first offering, and it arrived as a thrashing alt-rock song with heavy guitars and auto-tune.
After putting out an album like Brockhampton’s TM, which was so focused on pure rap sensibilities and expressions, there was a massive amount of intentionality for Abstract when it came to making Blanket such a visceral, distinctive mark of a new beginning for him as a solo artist. “I wanted to be a new artist, I wanted something fresh, something entertaining and something that just felt alive—to spark a new era for the audience and go as left as possible in the most tasteful way that is true,” he says.
The catalog of Brockhampton has always run side-by-side with that of Abstract’s solo career. When the Saturation trilogy dropped in 2017, he had already put out MTV1987 and American Boyfriend: A Suburban Love Story; GINGER and ARIZONA BABY came out within six months of each other. In a lot of ways, Blanket offered Abstract to go back to a pre-2017 state of grind, where he didn’t have a group project to fall back on once the buzz of his own work died down. “I feel like I’m building from the ground up again, just fully focusing on my fans and giving them what they want from me—which is good music,” he adds. Since Blanket’s release, the critical reception has been all over the map. The album was revered by some, seen as middle-of-the-road by others. It’s a dichotomy I expected from a project like this, where a rap group disbands and the frontman’s next work is categorically not a rap record. But I was shocked to see the ambition go unchecked in most music writing circles. I’m not sure there was an album by a more high-profile artist that saw the hype surrounding it evaporate once the initial press cycle was over.
But Blanket is a very good album, one that lives and dies by its own ambition. If you are not prepared to buy into the bandleader of Brockhampton—a music collective that was, at one point in time, the most popular group in hip-hop—making such an artistic pivot, which includes song arrangements that are more creatively fulfilling than they are sonically logical, then Blanket will probably not immediately land for you. And such a truth is totally fine, as Abstract has never been all that interested in riding the wave of momentum the music industry has tried to put under him. But, at the end of the day, Blanket exceeds its own distinctions by gliding on the same attitudes that made Brockhampton a monolith six years ago while reveling in a new sense of ambiguity.
“I wanted the music to hit like rap music,” Abstract explains. “Bass-heavy, and the energy is rapid, youthful. I didn’t want to make something that felt more guitar-driven, and I don’t necessarily rap on every song. I’m singing on everything, but I want it to feel like it will go crazy live the way some of the current rap concerts are right now. I want to live up to that bar. I also liked the idea of someone hearing this album and not knowing my race or knowing what genre it really is—because, at moments, it’s kind of confusing in a beautiful way.”