ScHoolboy Q
Blue Lips
TDE
ABOVE THE CURRENT
Because five years is basically now a whole ass eternity, I would’ve forgiven ScHoolboy Q for catering toward the middle on his first LP in half a decade, Blue Lips. It would’ve been fine for him to make Blank Face 2.0, to replicate the formula and build “Man of the Year” again, checking back in on the tiddies and asses and hands in the air that made that song so fun—a where-are-they-now for anonymous body parts last uttered a decade ago, or, more accurately, like, eight years ago at some now-defunct West Hollywood club.
He didn’t do any of this on Blue Lips. It’s daring, weird, thrilling, and clearly his best work to date, a beautiful indication that sometimes all one needs to get better is maturity, some introspection, and enough time away to reset and begin again. After a carnivalesque cruise through all the voices in Q’s head on opener “Funny Guy,” it’s extremely fun that the first words uttered on the album are “Ol’ fuck face punk rock bitch!” This line kicks off the Rico Nasty–assisted “Pop,” which begins in head-nodding, top-down, thizz-face territory before exploding into a post-Kanye-sampling-Fripp-now-everyone-likes-prog psychedelic haze of half-veiled threats and the only logical American answer to the dirty ecstasy of UK grime.
Elsewhere, ScHoolboy shows a more reflective side as he mourns the loss of old friends as he hopes that others don’t have to go through similar pain—as most 37 year olds are likely to experience. It’s just nice hearing someone at the top of his game, one of the most popular emcees in the game (I think?), express these thoughts that creep up on us when we least expect them. “Blueslides” sounds like grief. Ostensibly a tribute to Mac Miller (loosely named after his debut album), the cut features some of ScHoolboy’s most profound rapping: “How you made it up out of Figg’? It’s like he musta knew magic / Lost a homeboy to the drugs, man, I ain’t tryna go backwards.” ScHoolboy often uses tragedy to fuel the high points of the album, to count his blessings and celebrate the stacks of cash and good days while they still exist.
The best run on the album comes in the middle, when ScHoolboy stacks the classic gangsta rap track “Movie” with Az Chike alongside “Cooties” and the acid trip free-flow of the Freddie Gibbs–assisted “oHio.” The trilogy mirrors the scope of ScHoolboy’s career, beginning with an ode to South Central and featuring one of the area’s most important regional voices in Chike, before the next track finds him in the present: “Trust, I’ve had this shower for years, livin’ in fear / I know the feelin’ of bein’ trapped from all the things that you build.” It’s simple but incredibly profound: How does he build off his success? Is five years too long?
All the questions of Blue Lips are answered in that moment. The next era arrives with “oHio,” which features two late-30s rappers doing it better than most youngins in the game. It suggests that no matter how long it takes, ScHoolboy Q will continue to be one of rap’s most important, daring, and successful innovators. Some things only get better with age.
