We're all posers: AG Club's exploration of humanity on Imposter Syndrome.
AG Club’s fourth project provides an intimate look into the group’s views on music, life, and culture while maintaining their signature, unpredictable, genre-bending sound.
The up-and-coming Californian collective AG Club just released Imposter Syndrome in September of 2022, their fourth project in the last two years. The hip hop group is composed of 14 members, but generally led and spoken for by their most prominent members, Baby Boy and Jody Fontaine. AG Club broke onto the scene in 2020 with Halfway Off the Porch, their first album. The track “Memphis” went viral, garnering attention from the likes of A$AP Ferg and NLE Choppa, who were featured on remixes of the song. In an interview with All Hip-hop, Baby Boy described the origin of the album as “the moment when we were tryna jump off the porch and become who we wanted to be.” A fitting title for their breakthrough album, the group followed it up with a set of two albums in 2021: F*** Your Expectations PT. 1 and F*** Your Expectations PT. 2. All three albums exemplified AG Club’s unique sound, which has taken inspiration from other collectives like Odd Future and A$AP Mob. In line with the sentiment of their album titles, the group focuses on genre bending work that alternates from punk rock rap to smooth R&B to mellow acoustic chords with equally diverse vocals. Much like claims made from Brockhampton, the group often rebukes traditional genre classification and asserts they’re ‘genre-less’. To constrain them to simply a hip hop group is to limit the scope of their creativity. For AG Club, the focus is on authenticity.
AG Club has diverse musical talent that culminates in a strange amalgam of music on Impostor Syndrome. Songs like the intro “Adam Sandler” feel like the intersection of EDM, pop, and R&B. The result is a wonderfully intimate rollercoaster of sound and emotions, totally unlike the monotonous performances of its namesake. “Adam Sandler” along with songs like “Don’t ask, Don’t tell,” “Long Division,” “Bodega Bandit,” and “Mr. Put it On,” employ one of AG club’s common techniques of repetitive chant-like choruses that feel more like hypnosis than lyricism. However, the hypnotic effect is often pleasant and can take on energetic or mellow forms that really resonate. On other songs like “Tattoo” and “Kevin,” AG club takes on a more traditional form of rapping and simply spits. “Kevin” comes with grating and slightly goofy production that feels purposefully uncomfortable, but their aggressive bars and unique flow somehow make it work. They turn what feels like a bargain brand SoundCloud beat into a well-made song that has undertones of rock and punk within. On the other hand, “Tattoo” feels like an ode to the Club’s forgone past. With bars about “Sellin drugs to the white boys across the street,” it explores difficult pasts in a lighthearted manner. The group gets intimate on the track “TRU RELIGION,” which feels like an actually good MGK song with its acoustic instrumentals and rock-like vocals.
While their sound is truly diverse, and their content impressively deep, the album runs short: only 38 minutes for 13 songs. Furthermore, the enjoyment of their unique sound is curbed by its slightly repetitive nature. Even though each song sounds wildly different, they also almost sound the same. They also take on risks using more abstract hip-hop beats, which can decrease the listenability and repeatability of the album. Their rapping also lacks a level of technicality that is often seen as a hallmark of talent in rap.
The diverse sound that results from AG Club’s desire to go beyond the traditional boxes accompanied by musical genres is one of the driving forces behind the thematic content of their new album. While the connections between imposter syndrome and genre constraints isn’t easily discernible, AG Club takes it upon themselves to guide the listener on a journey through the human experience and the creation of art. Through this intimate exploration, the listener gains a better understanding of what imposter syndrome truly is. In the opening song, “Adam Sandler,” AG Club asserts, “Who you want to be isn’t up to me / Figure that then I’ll return.” The intro highlights the ultimate goal of the album: that one must explore one’s identity for oneself, no one else can do that for you.
While their goal seems concrete, it still begs the question: who is AG Club? For the rap group, that’s not really the issue at hand. They deflect and dismiss attempts to identify the true nature of the experimental group they’ve created. In the skit “Caterpillars Are Just Hungry,” they flippantly mock rap culture and rhetoric. Satirizing the ‘grind mindset,’ they jokingly claim that their caterpillar is hungrier than yours and boast about the amount of ‘CAJH’ (cash) they have. Clearly this is a rejection of traditional rap culture, but this song takes on a different tone within the context of the album as a whole. While this individual track may seem like a rejection, other songs like “Tattoo,” “Kevin,” and “Adam Sandler” reinforce traditional rap stereotypes of money, drugs, and women. What, then, can be concluded from this contradictory rhetoric? For AG Club, the point is the contradiction. They simultaneously embrace the rap culture which has been the cradle for their creative outlets and reject the notion that they must be confined by it. They are not rappers, singers, or even musicians — they are artists. Their creation is abstract, the guiding principles fluid and contradictory. This notion is crystallized in their song “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” where the chorus is a feverish chant “Ask do not- ask do not- / ask do not tell.” This mantra is directly commanding the listener to ask the group about themselves before making claims and spreading rumors about them and their music. They expand upon this later singing “I am who I am, it ain’t no discussion,” which ultimately shows that this album is an assertion of their own identity that is independent of anyone else’s opinions. Like their introduction on “Adam Sandler,” who they are is not up to anyone else but themselves. This appears to be deterministic and absolute, but in reality, it is an acceptance of the dynamic nature of identity. They are who they choose to be, and this choice is one made daily. They can be something one day and another the next. While this seems contradictory, from AG Club’s perspective the choices one makes every day do not define their identity, and, as such, anyone is free to change. As Fontaine explains “You can be a different person every single day and it doesn’t matter because at the end of the day you’re you. Those things that you like to do, they’re not your identity, they’re just small pieces of what makes you, you.”
While their assertion of a dynamic and fluid identity is convincing, the connection to imposter syndrome still seems unclear. Unsurprisingly, the answer lies in their skit named after the album, “Imposter Syndrome,” where singer Samplelov monologues about her experience as an artist. She talks about how she grew up with the urge to create and as she grew older felt “the pressure to commodify it, and to fit it into a box,” because it needed to be “easy to consume.” For her, and ultimately for AG Club, this is a finite constraint set on their — or anyone’s — limitless creative potential. Samplelov admits that she lost the true meaning of her desire to create, but eventually came to understand it. She says, “I want to translate my hearts language without fear… Art says ‘look I’m here I exist I am one of you’ / But I am always here even when no one is looking.” Her desire to create is an effort to communicate the ineffable nature of identity.
It is here that AG Club’s great exploration of the human condition comes to a close. The paradoxical nature that they have attempted to establish is not unique. Everyone chooses who they are every day; AG Club and other artists are simply individuals bold enough to attempt to communicate this contradictory identity to others through their art. Their music, their art, is a statement of their own humanity. The fear that Samplelov speaks of is really the fear of being woefully misinterpreted by preexisting biases that exist in society. Not necessarily biases of race, gender, or socioeconomic status, but the inherent bias that comes with classification and categorization. AG Club concludes that imposter syndrome is an unfortunate side effect of this universal human experience. That as we assert our humanity, we come to find a predetermined standard for it, whether that be in writing, music, visual art, or even conversation. There is an idea of what is ‘good,’ ‘bad,’ ‘rap,’ or ‘pop.’ In comparing ourselves to this standard, we start to question our worth and our own humanity and thus imposter syndrome takes root. This is why AG Club feels so strongly in their rejection of the status quo and genre classification. Their music is just self-expression and there is no need to categorize it in order to enjoy it.
Ultimately, I really enjoyed every aspect of Imposter Syndrome, even its faults. The short run time, repetitive chants, occasionally grating sound, and loose connectivity of the music prevents it from being a perfect album. The lyrics themselves are by no means as creative as the vision for the project itself or its message. Despite that, I was still moved by the music. While Imposter Syndrome has its problems, it's meant to be a reflection of the human experience, which is itself imperfect. In that way, Imposter Syndrome embodies the human experience to an even greater degree. It is definitely not the best rap album ever released, but that’s not its purpose. It's intimate, it's unique, it’s a 7/10.
edited by Mira Littmann.
album artwork believed to belong to either the publisher of the work or the artist.