The Brockton hip hop collective talk about the pride they have for their city, influence of different cultures on their music and the release of their new album Bad For Press.
“Personal style is very important because it exudes confidence and that spills into the music. Who doesn’t want to feel confident?” Van Buren Records designer, Moses Besong, asks. The Brockton-based hip hop collective is fresh off the release of Bad For Press, their first record created as a full group. The thirteen members called in from sunny Los Angeles over Zoom, and as they discussed their new project, I felt transported to the summery city as well, soaking in the warmth that can only come from the fruits of one’s labor paying off.
Initially born out of an ardor for style, fashion, and self expression by local designers and rappers Jiles, Lord Felix, Moses, and Shelby, the group became solidified as Van Buren Records—a name inspired by a reference to Seinfeld—around 2014. Since then, VB have set the Massachusetts music scene ablaze with 15 collective music releases in the past two years with no signs of slowing down. The 13-strong Van Buren crew share the same hunger to make authentic, perspective-shifting art and are comprised of producers, rappers, designers and creative consultants: Luke Bar$, Ricky Felix, Meech, Homeinvader, Jiles, Saint Lyor, Kiron, R Louie, Andrew Regis, E, Moses Besong, Shelby, and Lord Felix.
“The beautiful thing with self-expression in our group is the diversity and size of it. It’s dope to see all the different styles that everybody has; it plays a heavy role in their music,” said Moses. Moses and Shelby are two designers on the team, yet every member has a personal connection to clothing and self-expression. Lord Felix, for example, used to work in luxury retail and designed his own streetwear line, and Homeinvader recalls drawing inspiration from Felix and Moses in creating his own personal style.
“When you come across all these different worlds and different avenues in various environments that we’re running into, you draw a lot from that and then it really turns into a reflection of who you are,” said Homeinvader. “It’s just a different medium of art. When you’re an artist, everything you do should have, like, an artistic value; it should have that artistic component to it. So when you see the way somebody is dressing, especially if they’re artists, it’s saying something to you. It’s THAT important.”
Style has been a driving force for creation in all the members even prior to the groups’ conception, and now they continue to take the significance of individuality and various ways in which they express their identity into the music. “We’re composed of a lot of different personalities, so we tend to have disagreements and little moments in overthinking. That’s the best part about the music, those little moments, because you grasp all those moments and all those little parts start to make sense, you hear it in the music,” Ricky Felix tells me. “The album [Bad For Press] accurately reflects us and our city. It embodies what we’re trying to say.”
Released on April 16, the tape earned its name from the groups’ collective free-spirited attitude, and the fact that no matter what, they will not conform. “My lady, my girlfriend, had randomly said the phrase one day and I kind of just correlated it with the group,” said Ricky. “The things we say, and the things we do sometimes could be bad for press, so you put all those together and it made a perfect tornado.”
The 13-track album embodies the tensions that come from a group where every flow, every voice is so beautifully divergent. Yet that is also what makes the music so uniquely cohesive: VB’s collective ability to bounce off of one another while still maintaining their own disposition. Even on the sketch “VB Interlude,” the audience is given a glimpse into how unapologetically transparent the group is about who they are and what they represent.
“We’re coming from a state that’s very highly educated, very liberal. It’s a city full of Black immigrants. It’s the blackest city in New England,” said Homeinvader. “Every member of this group represents a different aspect of the Black American experience and what it means to be that in today’s day and age.” The pride of being from Brockton is incredibly evident in this project, with tracks like “Lil Haiti” embodying an ode to the city. The ways in which they were raised, the people they have met, and the experiences that have shaped them—good and bad—have been the key motivation for Van Buren’s newest body of work.
“While everyone in the group has their own Black experience in Brockton, it’s still a very similar one, because we all do share a lot of similarities and certain ways we were raised,” said Shelby. The project was rooted with the motive to get the world to understand Brockton and Van Buren a little better—and how everything they do will be expressed in the most raw and real way. “What I see for these boys is a group of unapologetic men who do as they please and represent the city for what the city really is,” said E. “We all come from the city. Every single last one of us have the Brockton story in us, so we come out and represent it.”
Brockton is home to a large population of immigrants, predominantly Haitian immigrants. From the food, to how people dress and down to how they talk, VB is continuously inspired by the melting pot they were raised in both in the music that they make, and their goals as artists.
“There’s really an insane amount of people from Haiti that are in Brockton right now, and a lot of them are in need of help. They’re just trying to make it through hoping that the child that they’re raising—the first generation that they’re raising here—is able to carry that candle, get a degree and make money,” said Meech. “So it’s very important to carry that into the music—and conversations like this too—letting you know, and future media outlets know as well, that we want to make sure that’s being heard and that’s being spoken through us. We’re really a vessel for it.”
The ability to have these meaningful conversations was taken to the next level when VB were recognized by Mayor Robert Sullivan of Brockton as an influential figure of the city due to their cultural contributions to the “City of Champions.” Being able to have a platform where they can have discussions with prominent political figures regarding enacting positive change means everything to the group. “I just hope the relationship that we have with him could blossom into something bigger than us,” said Luke Bar$. “There’s a lot of talent in general that comes from Brockton, so hopefully that relationship will blossom and open doors for everybody.”
Opening doors for other creatives in Brockton and paving a better route for the youth in general encompasses all that VB stands for. Standing up for their city, putting it on the map and showing the rest of the world how much more there is to come.
“Hopefully it sets an example for other people who want to do music who come from Brockton,” said Lyor. “It’s more about just laying a foundation for others to do their own thing. It’s really cool to see people reciprocating and showing us that they f*** with it. We’re grateful, we’re happy, but there’s still a lot of work to do.”
Given that Bad For Press took over a year to make (with the majority of the music being created during the isolation of COVID-19), the group found themselves looking for inspiration in new places and finding artistic appreciation in everyday things that can typically be taken for granted, such as watching sports through a screen or the visuals of music videos.
“We’re very observant; a lot of our creativity comes from just being outside and observing what’s going on around us and all that,” said Luke. “Being cooped up definitely hindered me a little bit. It hurt me at some points but I just had to learn how to maneuver around it. It kind of just forced us to try different takes on creating music.”
Isolation forced the group to become more introspective than ever before for their new project, dissecting past feelings and relationships. The sixth track on the tape, “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,” explores how, at times, lust is easier to navigate than love through the perspective of failed situations. “I pull a lot from negativity, I guess,” said Luke. “Growing up, I saw more lust than love. I’m just trying to implement that and everything else that I’ve been through into the art.”
The project tackles the individual experiences of all the members in the group, something that can be incredibly challenging when you have five very different vocalist personalities with equally variant flows. Being able to create a blanket in which everyone fits sonically and can be creatively free is the most challenging part of the process, yet also the most rewarding. “Working with a group like Van Buren, every artist has a different sound,” said Kiron. “So it’s a really fun, creative process because we have the freedom to make really different music.”
In order to achieve this marriage of sound where every idea flows cohesively into the next and everyone’s voice compliments the other without drowning it out, disagreements were inevitable. “We’re happy that everybody cared about this tape enough to have disagreements because if everybody agreed on everything, this tape wouldn’t be that good,” said Jiles. “I think we delivered the best project that we could have made.”
Bad for Press is a breath of fresh air, a reflection of how powerful a body of music can be when individuals are able to maintain their own personal styles in a supergroup and have the respect needed to bring each other up as a collective. “It’s very cold, it’s very loud, it’s very rugged, it’s very Black and it’s very unapologetic,” says their manager, Sheed. “It’s a Renaissance.”
Photos by Marika Belamarich