ScHoolboy Q - BLUE LIPS ALBUM REVIEW

ha hi everyone Rush the KN fast Tano here the internet's busiest music nerd and it's time for a review of this new school boy Q album Blue Lips yep sixth fulllength LP from California based rapper songwriter Lyricist Mr School booy Q one of the long beloved artists who is signed to the West Coast hip hop Powerhouse that is Top Dog entertainment home to Jrock siza AB Soul at one point Kendrick Lamar and many others early on in the 2010s the label and its biggest artists were seen like they were a closely knit Collective but over the years it became clear just how different the personal and artistic journeys of each person on TDE was specifically in the case of Q here you could say a lot of his catalog has been devoted to Reviving many of the classic tropes and themes of gangster rap but with a very out there there an experimental Edge you can hear it in the Forward Thinking production on oxymoron or the character-driven narratives and psychedelic soundplay of blank face there are points where I have been in vast disagreement with the school boy Q fan base in terms of like what the highs and lows of his catalog are but I think his first major Universal misstep uh came in the form of Crash talk in 2019 which not only featured some of his weakest songwriting yet but anything creatively weird or daring that made his previous records interesting was just nowhere to be found going from the very dense blank face to something as uh scant and as undercooked as crash talk was kind of like getting a bucket of ice water thrown in your face thankfully though with blue lips school boy seems to be back in his experimental bag as there's a lot of tracks a lot of runtime a lot of changes and a lot of effects on this record that I think blankface fans will appreciate I'm even liking this album a lot myself despite not being the biggest supporter of blank face and I think there's a few reasons for that one I think school boy is doing a better job at bringing some methodology to his Madness on this record and the more personal angle a lot of the tracks on this LP take uh makes the project overall just a lot more down to earth with a lot of moments on this project showing Q in one breath uh delivering sentimental feelings about his life his loved ones his past his trauma as well and then that clashes with the sheer emotional and mental chaos he's dealing with in his mind at any given time it's very much a war in his own mind where sometimes his desires or uh the rules of his way of life prior to becoming famous uh get the better of him and this back and forth plays out across a totally out ofc control track list that never really settles on one idea or feeling or Vibe for tooo long which yes kept me on my toes across the record but simultaneously uh made it difficult to kind of dig too deeply into any one central idea or feeling the tone for that in a way I think is set up pretty well by the intro cut which is very washed out it's repetitive it's trippy doesn't have much in the way of direction or definition which again I think is fitting because the record to follow to a slight degree is kind of a mess contrasts this with the closing track smile which is kind of a playful cut in 68 time where after everything that transpires up until this point Q is heard sounding absolutely Carefree with a smile on his face Melodies In His flows and then the whole track just ends abruptly shortly after a minute with Q saying that's it which makes it kind of short and unfulfilling as a final moment because really what's the takeaway here what was this all for I don't know if there's an answer I don't know if there's really supposed to be if anything I think what we've been given with blue lips is just a snapshot of Q's mind and mentality currently no more no less because I get the sense that this intro track and outro track uh really kind of bookend what is an emotional fever dream of sorts for Q where it becomes clear that present day he's leading a very different life than he was 15 years ago and this album kind of becomes a place to be able to reflect on that and plug back into a side of him that maybe he isn't as close to anymore not as close to but is still very much there and alive it's a you know very much a their two wolves living inside you type situation I think we hear one of those wolves on a track like pop the First full proper song on the record featuring Rico nasty where the record instantly goes from 0 to 100 bringing this sound that is uh almost Ultra edgy Odd Future Circa 2011 with uh some punk rock energy coming off of the guitar samples in the cut the beat is wild the energy is off the charts which I mean you should expect from any song that would bring a RICO nasty feature onto it it's so unbridled in its rage I'm not even sure q and Rico are caring all that much about uh uh their lyricism on this track most of Rico's feature or appearance on the song is her just like you know kind of throwing out this popper frame over and over and over and over I wish there were more bars to it but again I think this track is just really more about explosivity so yeah that's one Vibe that's one energy of the record we hear a combination of the album's two main emotional Vibes on the following thank God for me where you get these passages of woozy dizzying slow-mo Jazz rap that instantly transitions into some hype trap very Watch the Throne esque to a degree uh with lots of animated uh in-your-face aggressive vocal layers and ad libs and we switch back and forth between these two gears across the song very successfully I might add big contrast big Transitions and yet it's still a really cohesive song at the end of the day really the first handful of songs on the record pop thank God for me in blue slides kind of gives you the main emotional range of the record as the last of those three brings us a really emotional introspective piece of jazz rap where school boy is talking about the ways in which his life has changed uh there's a pretty clear Mac Miller nod at 1.2 the track overall is very affirmational it's almost a Lord's Prayer of sorts now as far as the 13 tracks from here are concerned the quality varies uh based upon the amount of structure consistency the beats the clarity the writing year 101 I did enjoy quite a bit as a single to me this track is Classic Q in so many ways it is slick Street poetry matched with a completely out there and very unlikely groove on the production side I just love how Q continues to be drawn toward uh the sorts of Beats and the sorts of rhythms that your average rapper just would not touch especially somebody who typically dabbles in the sorts of topics and uh lyrical focuses that he does now listening to this song in comparison with many others on this record I did come to feel like it could have used a bit more contrast or transition points across its runtime it is a little one note and the uh tensity of the song the building intensity of it across its runtime kind of feels like it's heading toward a climax that never quite happens so I'm not as in love with it upon more listens and it ends up being one of a handful of tracks on this record that I think could have used more length more development uh the interlude type moments like Noo-noo are an example also the song movie the closing track that I mentioned earlier but a lot of the time we are getting tracks on this LP that are well structured well written and display a certain kind of Chaos raging within them like love birds featuring Devon Malik and Lance Skywalker which is this experimental jarring constantly changing OE to love lust romance and desire to put it more bluntly it's like we're uh shifting back and forth between a more tender side and a full-on horny brain side marked with lovely Serene drippy Soul passages but then also just like industrial trap filth but working with uh pieces of trap that are so disperate in Vibe and style doesn't always pan out in Q's favor though case in point the song Ohio featuring Freddy Gibbs which in my opinion is just like this three-part slot piece with demonic chipmunk wraps kind of a cloudy G Funk passage and then some uh Moody Jazz rap on the last leg where we finally get Freddy Gibbs we are kind of waiting for him forever on this track and uh his appearance is lyrically kind of average for his standards like it's not a terrible track overall but it's so long- winded and there's not a whole lot of momentum being carried from one portion of the track to the next it's just kind of a SLO to listen to and I don't see myself coming back to it and again it's weird and unfortunate just how hamfisted and awkward the progression of a song like this is especially considering by contrast Fu featuring goes over so well as this track is even weirder but somehow more cohesive it sounds like a sex and drug fueled nightmare over super choppy rough beats that most rappers aren't touching experimental mainstream or I don't know a secret third thing there's also a lot of well executed contrast too on the song first where we get these uh deep voiced shouty refrains over uh some Eerie production it kind of sounds like a trap Death Grips and it's strange that a track like this contains uh so much fire so much aggression but then simultaneously on the back end a lot of Deep emotional and mental clarity as Q explores the more introspective pockets of his mind which we get a more thorough Taste of on other songs on the back end of this LP like lost times or Germany 886 which calls back to his birthplace his a parents divorce it really ends up being an Ode to his mother who raised him as well as an intense snapshot of his Youth and a lot of formative experiences too and on the song Time Killers time also becomes a a strong theme because I guess as Q is getting up there in age he's uh not only mourning the time that he's felt he's lost up until this point but also trying to fight against and ignore things that could kill or waste his time today so again with this Trio of tracks I've just mentioned uh passage of time uh this kind of being a new and different phase of Q's life uh this becomes a pretty clear focus and with it being one of the biggest themes of the record in this way you have to kind of imagine that this is also influencing a lot of the other material on the album it's connected to all of it in some way especially with a lot of the more aggressive Vibes and lyrics on this record referencing back to a time in his life that has long passed be that back in love or be that uh The militaristic Surreal uh cop death rager pig feet and that's not to say that Q's heart or his mind isn't like fully in uh these sorts of tracks like obviously it certainly is but there's definitely a point of Separation there between this younger more rash more inexperienced uh self that he's rapping from the standpoint of on this record and this you know new more mature version of himself that actually has like something to lose now considering how far he's come sometimes you're getting one side of that coin sometimes the other sometimes an IL defined combination of both and it makes the album interesting and and certainly unique uh to any other project in Q's discography but where I think this record Falls a little short is that it doesn't really kind of dive into this dichotomy deeply enough like it's clearly there it's clearly inspiring the tension that is uh absolutely deafening throughout this entire record but it's not explored or dug into explicitly enough for I think the listener or even Q to an extent uh to glean anything super substantive or deep out of it in fact I think at the closing track displays anything it's a very much an ignorance is bliss mind in terms of uh just not really untangling this entire mess which ends up making this dichotomy feel less like a formal central theme and more like an elephant in the room so unfortunately because of that I think there is some incredible and amazing conceptual potential to this record that goes very much untapped but even with that not being Illustrated to the degree that it could have been uh this is still a very good album from school booy Q some of his best and most interesting song ideas instrumental experiments and verses turn up on this record and for sure at age 38 school boy Q still has uh loads of creative ideas lots of gas left in the tank and there's absolutely no reason to believe that he is anywhere near past his creative Prime I'm feeling a decent to strong seven on this record transition have you given this album a listen did you love it did you hate it what would you rate it you're the best you're the best what should bu review next hit the like if you like Please Subscribe and please don't cry hit the Bell as well over here next to my head is another video that you can check out hit that up or the link to subscribe to the channel Anthony fantano school boy Q forever

Channel: theneedledrop

Views: 195,668

Keywords: album, review, music, reviews, indie, new, lyrics, listen, track, concert, live, update, the needle drop, anthony fantano, vlog, talk, discussion, music nerd, song

Id: gdV0d5wgLzw

Length: 13min 37sec (817 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 05 2024