You'd be forgiven for assuming ScHoolboy Q was ready to kick back and relax. His fifth studio album, 2019's CrasH Talk--the third consecutive LP of his to debut in the top three on the Billboard 200--capped a decade of dominance for the South Central-bred rapper, one that saw him rack up Gold and Platinum plaques, five Grammy nominations, and a reputation as one of the most inventive and influential stylists in Los Angeles and in hip-hop writ large. But something was just a little bit off. "I didn't feel like my normal self anymore," he says of the moment just before the Covid-19 pandemic. "I'd done so much in the industry, accomplished so much, checked off all these boxes. I'd won, but I wasn't really satisfied." Blue Lips, Q's rabidly anticipated sixth album, not only gets to the bottom of that uncomfortable feeling but probes beyond it, and allows him to redefine success on your own terms.
On one level, Q says, Blue Lips is about speechlessness--it was made in a period of self-reflection that at first yielded more questions than answers. There are also the connotations of the color itself: the sadness it can imply, but also the openness of blue skies. But more than anything, the album, Q's most focused and sonically adventurous to date, is about perseverance in the face of adversity. "It was hard some days" to keep going, he says, "and I gave up at times. But it would just be one day, or two days. Then I'd get back to it."
That instinct to bounce back was forged early. Early in his childhood, Q and his mother settled on L.A.'s 51st Street. The city at the time was still haunted by the gang wars of the 1980s and the riots that erupted after the Rodney King verdicts in 1992. Those acute clashes, combined with the decades of aggressive policing and surveillance that had preceded them--and intensified in their wakes--made for a sometimes volatile environment. But to hear him tell it, that was as much a blessing as a curse. "Men need a little bit of trauma in their life," Q says. "That shit was needed--that's why I'm here. I see a woman getting hurt," for example, "I'm gonna do something; I'm not gonna be some little coward."
From the moment he stepped in a recording booth, it was clear Q had something to offer beyond strict reportage of what he'd seen growing up. His personality on wax is totalizing: He can growl or snarl and cut through a beat like a serrated knife, or he can slide nimbly into pockets that would elude nearly any other rapper. He's a buoyant jolt of energy on virtually every track he's ever touched.
Around his 20th birthday, Q got involved with Top Dawg Entertainment, the collective that would not only launch his career but become perhaps the most important creative force in rap in the 2010s. Together with compatriots Jay Rock, Ab-Soul, and Kendrick Lamar, Q vaulted from virtual anonymity to the top of the food chain. And deservedly so: His 2011 debut, Setbacks, was passed around the blogosphere like a sacred scroll, mixing unbridled aggression with frequently shocking self-exploration to form a mixture that was utterly intoxicating. A star was born; for nearly a decade, the momentum would never waver.
But after CrasH Talk--after 2012's Habits & Contradictions, 2014's Oxymoron, and 2016's Blank Face LP; after becoming one of the genre's most recognizable faces and voices--Q found himself confronting that void. The months of Covid lockdown didn't help, until one day they did. Eventually, Q found himself "staring in the mirror after all these accomplishments and admitting I still need a lot of help--mentally, physically." He tried therapy for a bit, but noticed that its primary effect was to make him feel sorry for himself. So he dug even deeper, and began sorting through which traumas were necessary, formative experiences that had molded him into the man he wanted to be, and which ones he could release.
The time of reflection led to some frustrating realizations about what most outsiders would have assumed was an era of unqualified happiness. "I would do most things for money," Q says, reflecting on the mid- and late-2010s. "And that shit don't mean nothing, because you're just going to spend that shit." But in the years since CrasH Talk, his work on himself has made him a better, more balanced person, in ways big and small. "I don't procrastinate as much," he says, the grin practically audible. "My dogs love me again. My relationship with my wife is back on track."
It recalls the Flaubert quote: "Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work." Q's newfound personal peace has yielded an album that's unsparing and radical. Blue Lips draws its texture and its worldview from the blaxploitation flicks he mainlined during its creation: warm instrumentation chopped in agile new ways, the ethos of making the most of the resources you have. "The fact that they were able to pull off any of this back then, when they could barely go to school or anything," Q says of those filmmakers, was a key inspiration: "They did all this with literally nothing."
It's easy to see how that more-with-less spirit informs Blue Lips. The album features Q's most precise, economical writing to date (he says he's immensely proud of his hooks in particular) and injects new emotions and tones seemingly at will, without warning and without preamble. It's the kind of record that could only be made by someone who has mastered his skillset--and knows exactly what he wants to say. And what ScHoolboy Q wants to say is that it's time to keep our eyes on the horizon. "Whatever happened in the past isn't today," he says. "I can't really fix it. But I can fix today and tomorrow."
