5. Schoolboy Q – Habits & Contradictions (LostFiles)

With all the TDE members (apart from Jay Rock) it took me a while to get into their music. Schoolboy Q was someone I didn’t really have any interest in knowing anything about when I first heard about him. But then I heard his verse on Kendrick’s “The Spiteful Chant” track and since then I’ve been a fan. Q seems to have a way of blurring the lines of what gangster rap exactly is. 

A lot of the productions on the album sounds like some Sci-Fi soundtrack stuff. Songs like “Sex Drive”, “There He Go” & “How We Feeling” really sound like some abstract futuristic tracks to me. Specially  “NiggaHs.Already.Know.Davers.Flow” and “Nightmare On Figg St.”. These tracks describe Schoolboy Q the best in my opinion. Sci-Fi x Gangster Rap = Schoolboy Q. Both these tracks just contain aggressive lyrics on some eerie production. 

There are also a few New York sounding boom-bap records with songs like “My Homie” (which sounds like an early Mobb Deep beat) & “Gangster In Designer (No Concept)” which is interesting as he’s from Los Angeles. But he does have some West Coast types of production; “Grooveline Pt. 1” (which is an okay track) & “Raymond 1969”. I really like this track because it sounds like old school west coast instrumentation with early New York rap style drum pattern and a major distortion that just makes it sound raw and gritty. 

There were a few songs that I found to be a bit bland, tracks like “Sacrilegious”, “Sexting” & “Oxy Music”. The tracks are just not interesting to the rest of the album to me. “Blessed” is a track I was disappointed in because Kendrick features but the beat is so poor he might as well of not been on the song. I think it’s a waste of a verse from both rappers to be honest. The beat is just terrible to me. 

The “Tookie Knows (Interlude)” is just something that didn’t need to be on the CD. “2 Raw” is an alright track. It could of easily fell in to the fillers category but I’m on and off with the track, sometimes it’s cool, then sometimes it’s just boring. He also has two party bangers tracks I really like in “Druggys Wit Hoes Again” and “Hands On The Wheel”. Both Ab-Soul and A$AP Rocky both did the deed with their respective verses. Both tracks have nice grooves to the point you can't help but nod your head or bounce to the beat.

Winners: Gangster In Designer (Concept), NiggaHs.Already.Know.Davers.Flow, How We Feeling, Hands On The Wheel, Druggys With Hoes Again, Nightmare On Figg St., My Homie

Fillers: Sacrilegious, Oxy Music, Sexting, Blessed & Tookie Knows (Interlude)

Honourable Mentions: Sex Drive, My Hatin’ Joint, Raymond 1969, Grooveline Pt. 1, 2 Raw & There He Go

Thanks For Reading

Hope You Enjoyed It

Stevie