My ears are still ringing. The waitress from Waffle House just asked me if I was ready to order and the two guys behind the counter are dancing to Daft Punk. After I order my patty melt, I look at my two best friends as they are still buzzing with energy and bright with smiles. We just spent the last hour and forty-five minutes screaming, jumping, and singing to the sounds of Brockhampton.
I’ve been to a lot of concerts in my short lifetime and only 4 of those were rap concerts. I’ve seen Logic (twice), Chance the Rapper, and Drake & Future, all of whom I have been very big fans of for a while now and have passed the “fanboy” phase for those artists. Brockhampton, however, is a different story. I started listening to BH in August and have since then consumed all three of there Saturation albums multiple times. I know all 14 members, the words to most of their songs, and a lot of facts and trivia only a music nerd like me would know. It’s safe to say I am a BH fanboy (BH fans are usually dubbed “dumbasses”) and my fanboy-dom only increased my hype for this concert. Needless to say I was not disappointed at all.
The energy was already in the building as soon as I walked in. Standing in the crowd for an hour waiting for the show to start, I overheard so many conversations about how excited people were. Everywhere I looked, people were smiling and laughing with their friends, just like I was. One of my friends, Henry, went to go buy me and my other friend, Amanda, some merch while we held his spot in the crowd (Nick Holiday was running the merch line which was pretty cool). As more people packed in, Amanda and I became more aware that Henry might not get his spot back. People around us were frantically checking their phones every 2 minutes waiting for 9pm to hit. They actually started around 9:15, which definitely created a lot of suspense. But we were ready. As soon as the lights went down, the crowd went nuts. I can’t even tell you what happened between the lights going down and the beginning of “BOOGIE” (mostly because I rushed out of the crowd for fear of being swallowed and never to be seen again). The next thing I knew, I was jumping up and down, singing the words to “BOOGIE” asking “what were the rules for breakfast today?” I was already running out of breath from jumping and it felt like a sauna inside the Ritz, but it didn’t stop me from belting out every word of every song.
And the energy just kept on going.
This held true even as I continued to rap every single word to Dom McLennon’s verse on “STAR”. Even when I thought I was out of breath, I would look over to other BH fans who were also rapping the verses, and their energy alone helped me continue on. I looked up to see that the Ritz had the ceiling fans on full blast, but the venue staff was still running around trying to get free water to all of the concert goers. Brockhampton was just delivering too much heat (pun intended).
The concert took you just about everywhere. One minute they’re performing “GUMMY” and “SWEET” and it feels like a rap concert. The next, their playing “BUMP” and “QUEER” and it feels like a head banging rock concert. When they played “SISTER” it felt like a heavy-EDM rave party. And when Bearface came out to perform his solo songs “SUMMER” and “EVANIE”, it felt like I was at Coachella with a flower crown on my head. Brockhampton was able to do all of this in under 2 hours and it felt like an exhilarating roller coaster ride that you wanna ride over and over again
I never knew what it meant to burn the house down until I went to this concert. It felt like a raging fire was all around me the entire night. Watching people put their hands to their knees to catch their breath for 2 seconds and continue jumping and down proved that nothing could stop the energy that Brockhampton brought to the crowd. Not even Kevin Abstract’s cold could stop him from performing. And that’s the highlight of the whole concert: the energy. As mentioned before, I’ve listened to all three SATURATION albums more than enough times, but watching the songs I loved performed live brought a whole new energy to them. Much against my personal judgements of living in the moment, I took a few videos while BH performed in hopes that I could capture that energy and save it for later. But it was impossible. I’ve even tried closing my eyes while listening to their songs again to bring myself back to the night of January 29th, 2018, but it still wasn’t good enough. What Brockhampton did in Raleigh, and probably all of their other shows on the Love Your Parents Tour, was incredibly energetic and an experience I have never felt before in my life. And just as the tour name states, I realized how much I love my parents for bringing me into this world so I could witness this amazing event. And just like the members of Brockhampton, experiencing the concert with my two best friends made it so much better.
¡Me llamo Carlitos y Brockhampton es la mejor banda de chicos en el mundo!