Leave it to ScHoolboy Q to quench the audience’s thirst for new quality hip-hop music excitement in early 2024—after a near five-year drought, no less. Today, at the turn of the March calendar month, the Black Hippy wordsmith releases his long-awaited six studio LP BLUE LIPS, a muscular collection of eighteen brand new cuts, just shy of one hour of runtime. With Kendrick Lamar gone, and SZA having transcended beyond the indie label perception and treatment, the 37-year old West Coast MC is arguably the inherited poster child for what Top Dawg Entertainment stands for. It’s only understandable then how this drop has been turning a significant amount of heads in the hip-hop pantheon of recent, not least due to the California label’s elusive and slim pickings promo roll out accompanying this release.

A TDE mainstay for over a decade now, Q has been a consistent paramount asset in thrusting the imprint’s impact, success, and credibility past the insular rap stratosphere. Absent the multi-generational talent and GOAT-claimant Kendrick Lamar, the Germany-born rapper’s contributions in upholding the West Coast’s rap legacy past the G-funk one-dimensionality have arguably been of greater impact than those of fellow group members Ab-Soul and Jay Rock—particularly amongst scene critics. His new project BLUE LIPS, a body of work that can count featured guests such as Rico Nasty, Lance Skiiiwalker, and Freddie Gibbs amongst its ranks, is distributed by Interscope Records and was preceded by a sole lead single, the nocturnal and rabid “Yeern 101“, dropped in mid February.

With virtually the whole hour of material left to the fans’s imagination, and no meaningful leak to speak of ahead of its street date, this project felt like a generous and auspicious affair. Well, with the benefit of a handful replays hindsight under our belts, BLUE LIPS pulls out all the stops. It is gelled together by a unified versatility and a patchworked assembly more akin to a mixtape, than a conceptual album—the notion of ‘blue lips’ underpinning the record with multiple inherent connotations ranging from floral to medical is clearly intentional. The full listening experience equates to surrendering to a slew of loose cannons, where even shorter one-to-two minute skit records such as “Movie” (trading vocal duties with guest Az Chike), “Germany ’86“, and “Smile“, act less as interludes than glorified thematic palate cleansers, strategically peppered across the tracklist.

Also, there isn’t a joint on here that doesn’t leverage some degree of flow or beat switching; surprisingly, it almost always sticks the landing. “Pop“, co-signed by the aforementioned Rico Nasty at number two on the album, is basically a couple different tunes seamlessly merged into one rager, whereas the forte-piano Gaussian bell distribution on the following three-minute belter “THank god 4 me” should not make sense, but it does. Conversely, the laser-focused and formulaic eight track “Cooties” finds ScHoolboy Q in rare lyrical form: “From start to fin’ I can, better my wheels / Like, literally, my daughters is chill / Likе, I can’t believe my housе on the hill / Like, I can’t believe that mountain is real / Accountant is thrilled / The scars on the back of me healed“. Its hypnotic and bell toll-y beat make it a clear standout on the album.

Throughout the sequencing, Q strikes a subtle yet convincing balance in being earnestly direct about his message conveyance, and curtailing a fair topical amount left to the listener’s interpretation. Strongest case in point, the whole entire project name (although the TDE recording artist does let us know that he leads with its shock and speechlessness semantic variation). Elsewhere, we find one of the purest highlights in “oHio“, halfway through the record—a boneless and spastic Alchemist-trademark production atop which the TDE heavyweight and rap verse of the year nominee Freddie Gibbs absolutely annihilate the backtrack beat, with both kindness and fury.

An inspired fellow Black Hippy compatriot Ab-Soul shows up fiercely on the following “Foux“, both MCs snaking and dicing through the most off-the-wall drum & bass production on this whole thing. In many ways though, this tune could and should act as the cliff note to cheat coding the whole record—with its discordant morphing of soft piano licks and zany percussive motifs, the occasional sea of reverb drowning the bars being spat, as well as one of the most heart-on-sleeve stanzas on the project (Ab’s “Repent for my sins, then I turn around / By next weekend, do it again / Wash, rinse, repeat, cycle won’t end / Just spin, I’m bent, she bent, and bend over“), this is your reference track.

BLUE LIPS does not hold back on its rear-end, either. Full beat deconstruction, a flat-out masterclass in sample flipping, and cold-blooded sound design underscore the solo Q track combo meal at number eleven and twelve (“First” and “Nunu“). Following it, the TDE camp sees fit to place the one radio-friendly booming hook on “Back n Love“, a bona fide trap-rager aptly assisted by a surprisingly convincing Devin Malik (an otherwise in-house producer for certain label products by Isaiah Rashad and REASON). Not long after that, “Time killers” offers some true blue (lipped) respite as a welcome breather, soft-grinding highly warped beat engineering with adept lyricism (“Home of the brave, ran by the slaves / Stole everybody name so white Jesus on the chain / I feel proud when it hangs / Try to hide from the fame and still came with a bang), and yes you guessed it: several mini-beat switches halfway through.

Meanwhile, penultimate cut “Pig feet” gives us wall-to-wall abrasive delivery and more subaltern flows, with Atlanta-based Grammy-nominated rapper and producer Childish Major stealing most of the three minute scene on tape. Do not get it twisted though, if one only listened to this joint, they’d be fooled to think BLUE LIPS is yet another dime-a-dozen trap-rage exploit not dissimilar from the many seen in today’s mainstream rap. Yet one of this album’s main strengths is found in its effortless ability to valorize the impressive sonic range of West Coast sounds, rap rock flows, and jazz rap styles, all baked into the hour of solid material on here. All credit goes to ScHoolboy Q and his posse, for not only making it work wonders, but having it sound so sticky whilst at it. Turns out those with blue lips are all of us.

We’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and we hope to feel your interest again next time.

AV

SCHOOLBOY Q

BLUE LIPS

2024, Top Dawg Entertainment

https://www.groovyq.com