After being dethroned by Blink-182’s California last week, an additional 92,000 album sales (the majority coming from streaming) helps Drizzy’s double platinum project climb back to No. However, Blank Face LP is already shaping up to be Q’s most critically acclaimed release and a strong contender for Album of the Year.Īs for who stole the top spot on the albums chart this week? Drake’s VIEWS, of course. 1 on the Billboard 200 with first-week sales of 139,000.
ScHoolboy Q’s previous album, 2014’s Oxymoron, debuted at no. 52,000 of that amount came from physical sales, making Blank Face LP the highest selling album this week. Groovy Q’s second major label album - and fourth project overall - claims second place on the albums chart after moving 74,000 equivalent units. On the title track, he lays out his best defense of this mindset, rapping, “Told me stay in school, my dream was just a small percentage / Said a million wasn’t realistic / Last year I spent it, what’s the laws of physics? / Move pounds or move down to Section 8 livin’/ Grew up around Crippin’.TDE adds another top 10 album to its name as ScHoolboy Q’s Blank Face LP debuts at No. When Q succumbs to money, drugs, and the occasionally violent intersections between the two, he’s not selling anything but his reality. Excuses and justifications come seldom and too matter-of-fact to be asking for approval.
#School boy q blank face lp tde full#
Like the title hints, Blank Face LP is dark and full of stone-grilled stares that lay things out in plain terms, and there’s very little, if any, glamorization at play. It’s not easy to homogenize the opposing forces at play, but everything here feels like a genuine rumble through a mind scarred and inebriated by the reality of gang life and chasing the American dream while the room spins. But by the next song - the brooding and hostile “Ride Out” with Vince Staples - Q professes that “Album four is really like Crippin’ on my minibike,” and he’s emptying clips, vacating skulls, and erasing innocent bystanders with no hint of conscience or hesitation. gangsta rap seems to be reverting to its origins, Q is doing the same, but also pushing forward by “rapping my ass off.” That’s what he asserts on “Kno Ya Wrong,” which finds producer Alchemist abandoning his signature dark grooves to team up with Terrace Martin for a breezy bit of jazz that becomes a To Pimp a Butterfly–esque funk session at the halfway mark. There seems to be no overarching desire to justify the existence of this record - instead, its existence seems to be enough. These disparate parts and influences don’t come together on Blank Face LP, as they’re just brazenly present in defiance of category. Its been nearly 3 years since ScHoolboy Qs incredible fourth studio album Blank Face LP, with a lot of glimmers of hope of new music ever since.Even back in 2017, the TDE rapper was talking. A slob in high fashion, Q is just as under the pall of “Jheri curls, cut Dickies, and sherm smoke” as he is shrouded in bucket hats, Balmain jeans, and Ox圜ontin tablets. He’s a goofy-yet-menacing personality that comes off as both endearing and untrustworthy - “I’m a gangbanger, deadbeat father, and drug dealer,” he raps on the Swizz Beatz-produced “Lord Have Mercy.” It’s a statement that contradicts his affirmed love and care for his daughter (he took a hiatus from recording to be present as a parent), but he says it with such conviction that it feels dangerous to point out the disparity. He’s a gangbanger and a (Black) hippy that’s just as liable to rap about selling pills as overdosing on them. The highly anticipated project stands as an impressive return to proper gangster rap for both the artist and the genre. Q’s admiration of Williams makes sense - aside from the obvious Hoover Crip affiliation, ScHoolboy Q works within similar dichotomies. Rapper and LA native Quincy Matthew Hanley, better known as Schoolboy Q, released his fourth studio album early last week, entitled Blank Face LP. On “Tookie Knows II,” from his fourth album, the newly released Blank Face LP, he spits, “A young nigga back on Fig / H crown on wig / Shoe strings say where I’m from / On probation and got my gun.” It’s the kind of nod to the 52 Hoover Gangster Crips and lawlessness that just whizzes by within a soft-horror score dedicated to Stanley Williams, a founding member of the Crips, who was executed by lethal injection in 2005, after spending 25 years behind bars, during which he transformed himself into an author who cautioned against the perils of street life. As a rapper, he’s much better than meets the ear, spitting off coded insider details in flurries of strangled yelps that camouflage technical proficiency and terse writing. He’s indebted to many things - many parts that don’t define him as a whole. It’s hard to make grand pronouncements about ScHoolboy Q.