Ciarán, ex-Brockhampton's Bearface, Goes Full D'Angelo on Solo Debut

By Elena Vasquez

Ciarán McDonald, the former Brockhampton vocalist and producer once known as Bearface, has released his solo debut album, Róisín — a record that reaches past modern bedroom pop straight into the catalogues of D'Angelo and Prince.

The album arrives four years after Brockhampton dissolved in 2022. McDonald spent that stretch working intermittently on the record, which reworks material from his time in what reviewers called a rowdy, mostly Texan, L.A.-based "boy band."

Who is Ciarán McDonald?

McDonald is a Northern Irishman who occupied a peculiar position inside Brockhampton. Early on, the group relegated him to brooding bridges and disarmingly sweet outro ballads. His marginality, reviewers noted, enhanced the effect of his appearances: while the collective rotated among showoffy personalities and assembled songs from pitch-shifted shards, a striking figure stayed hidden in plain sight.

For context on his era: Brockhampton's 2017 trilogy of SATURATION albums remains a benchmark for listeners too young to fully absorb Odd Future but formed by Blonde, Flower Boy and SoundCloud rap.

What does Róisín sound like?

The lead single, "Houston," is the clearest statement of intent. It opens with a dub siren and adapts an old Brockhampton-era demo into, in the reviewer's words, "a full-on Voodoo tribute" — a reference to D'Angelo's 2000 funk landmark.

The track runs on a dry, squelchy funk backdrop layered with a deluge of gospeldelic vocals. McDonald warps between falsetto and midrange and tells a Texas love story, complete with a lyrical nod to the hip-hop duo UGK. The reviewer compared the effect to Ciarán "scrying the Electric Lady studio through a crystal ball" — channelling the fabled New York rooms where D'Angelo and Prince made records.

McDonald's whiny, digitized vocal smear, the review argues, anticipated a wave of post-pandemic emo singers in the mode of brakence and bixby.

The boldest moment is also the brashest. On "Houston," McDonald sings: "No, he can't fuck you like I can" — a line the reviewer notes even D'Angelo rarely matched in sheer audacity.

The verdict from the source review is double-edged: like Brockhampton itself, the song is impressive in its preening confidence and off-putting in its unsubtlety. McDonald is described as "deadly serious" about his two towering influences — and the music stakes that seriousness on every bar.

Takeaway: Róisín trades the fragmented collage of SATURATION-era Brockhampton for a single, focused argument — that a former boy-band outlier can carry the funk-revival mantle alone. Whether listeners accept that argument will decide if McDonald's marginality becomes his center stage.