Here, Hippo Campus killed what they knew and started again. I felt like it was a very safe space to be earnest." "And each person could chime in with their own experience. "With LP3, Hippo felt like a very safe space to express those things because you have your best friends around you, rallying behind you," Luppen says. It was challenging in its own way to branch outside of Hippo - and it made the eventual return to the project feel like coming home. Navigating solo projects and new dynamics and the spotlight alone is humbling, bringing up new insecurities and defense mechanisms. Luppen and Stocker both put out solo records as Lupin and Brotherkenzie respectively, and the two also teamed up with Caleb Hinz to put out the debut Baby Boys record while DeCarlo Jackson founded, and collaborated with multiple bands around the Twin Cities, including DNM, Arlo, and FPA. Over the last few years, the Hippo universe has expanded outward. And, in the end, it happens with the same ride-or-die crew at your back to hold you down - or up - the entire time.
If you take the signifier of "musician" away, what does it mean? And how do you expand your identity outside of work? Here, it's something the band works through. It traverses the end of relationships, of careers, and the chance of meeting yourself as a brand new person. So much of LP3 was written in the chasm between grappling with the value of your own art and the larger, chaotic context of the world. LP3 marks a sort of ego death - and ultimately feeling okay with that. It's also a study in the nuances of growing up - coming to terms with mortality, the confusing journey of sexuality, bottoming out, seeing decisions from the night before in the harsh morning light finding your identity as a person and as an artist - how that can be a collision of elation and shame, painful and joyful all at once. Although the five-piece has been friends since middle school and put out a number of studio releases since its inception, it's the new record, LP3, that's the most honest portrait of who Hippo Campus is. In the years between 2018's BAMBI and LP3, Minneapolis' Hippo Campus - made up of vocalist/guitarists Jake Luppen and Nathan Stocker, drummer Whistler Allen, bassist Zach Sutton, and trumpeter DeCarlo Jackson - has grown up and into itself.
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