Crash Talk - Schoolboy Q: Review
Schoolboy Q
is a California rapper, signed to Top Dawg Records and a member of Black Hippy as a result. He first made waves with his independently released Habits & Contradictions album in 2012 that resulted in his signing to TDE. In 2014 Q released his critically acclaimed major label debut with Oxymoron, an album that saw him rapping with more explosiveness than ever before and hopping on more experimental beats. Two years later Q followed this up with Blank Face LP his fourth official studio album which was met with mixed reviews and resulted in a dulled level of hype here three years later for Crash Talk. After two misses on the albums first two big singles hopes weren't high for Crash Talk and given that Top Dawg had a miss last year with Jay Rock's Redemption, Crash Talk had an uphill battle from the start.
Review By Lavender:
I have always; against popular opinion, considered Schoolboy Q to be the black sheep of Black Hippy. Given the brilliant level of quality Kendrick Lamar delivers, the excellence of landmark albums like Jay Rock's 90059 and Ab-Soul's Control System and even broader successes on Top Dawg like SZA's CTRL and Isaiah Rashad's The Sun Tirade, Schoolboy Q seems so consistently underwhelming. I was not impressed whatsoever with my introduction to Q on Habits and couldn't follow why the album was garnering so much hype. But the real head-scratcher for me was the universal acclaim shoveled out for Oxymoron. What most critics called a great new wave of experimental rap felt to me more like a timid series of decent hits and huge misses on ideas that aren't usually that hard to land. The quality certainly declined from Oxymoron to its follow-up Blank Face LP yet shockingly there were still so many people running to the defense of an album that had a highlight reel made up almost entirely of features. But given an even further lapse in quality coming onto Crash Talk I will be flat out stunned to see if anyone jumps to the albums defense.
The first two singles for the album set an unwavering course towards it being a disappointment. Starting with Numb Numb Juice, which is on the surface level a track that's trying to be a hard hitting banger called Numb Numb Juice, but even deeper than that it's a decent beat with fiery and energetic moments that get cancelled out immediately by bad bars and lazy flows, The second single never even reaches that potential, Chopstix features an awful and brazenly underwritten Travis Scott hook and some of the most aimless and uninspired verses Q gives on the entire project. This song sounds like it was conceived, written, recorded and mastered in some 15 minutes and by no means effectively. Both the introduction track Gang Gang and the outro Attention suffer from similar lack of writing and completely underwritten performances.
Given the defining qualities of underwritten verses, rushed beats, and completely awful choruses there are a few other songs we can narrow down. Drunk has a 6lack feature that is a brutally boring slog, they trade off verses that try their hardest to be forgotten in between an awful sampled hook. Lies is one of the worst Q moments here as he stumbles through a bad Lil Wayne impression. The song features Ty Dolla $ign who does his thing pretty well on the hook and a just okay verse from YG that has some pretty sharp lyrics but ends too soon. Finally Water once again underwhelms, the song is actually decent and Lil Baby doesn't really kill it like he does most songs he features on, but ultimately it is the dull moment in a surprisingly unique second half of the album.
Talking of the second half of the album while it really only contains one song that is truly good from start to finish, compared to the first half it is another world. 5200 has one of the more unique beats on the project that I've gone back and forth on pretty much every time I hear it. Once again the hook is awful but for the first time I'm actually impressed by his flows and once you get over the hook it is a decent track. Wasted once AGAIN has a terrible hook but the verses are very sharp and actually have a pretty solid variance, The first one if pretty lowkey, witty and analytical and the second one is a bit more frontal. Unfortunately the song fades out in a strange place that seems completely arbitrary and leaves some more to be desired. Die With Em is another track that has some solid production but it does get a little bit boring pretty quickly into the song without much change in any of its elements.
Dangerous is an interesting format for a rap song that surprised me to hear but I enjoy it. The main bulk of the song is one long verse from Q that builds on itself as it goes on and lands in a really cool and intense climax. Unfortunately because everything on Crash Talk comes with a caveat the song starts and finishes with comatose moan refrains from Kid Cudi that completely suck the life out of the song and kill its momentum. The other track that is really close is Tales early on in the record. It's a song that is mostly there for a great story and even though the beat is pretty average and I don't love Q's delivery the stories he spins and the lyricism is good.
The two songs that I actually unequivocally enjoy here are Floating and the third single Crash. Floating has a great beat and tolerable hook, Q is pretty sharp and even though I know it'll piss off some TDE fans, 21 Savage drops what is probably the best verse on this entire album during his appearance on this track. And finally Crash has some sharp production from boi-1da and may be my favorite song of the bunch with what may be the only good hook, great lyrics and flows throughout and a series of compelling bars that kept me hooked.
Despite a few worthwhile moments the large majority of Crash Talk's 40 minutes sounds like a series of underwritten songs with studio polish that fails to cover up the huge flaws in songwriting, lyricism and beat choices across the project. The album is the synthesis of every critique I've had of Q over the years and doesn't surprise me at all given how much leeway his fans have granted him to produce underwhelming songs in the past. Obviously given the talent at TDE I will continue to listen to whatever the label releases and there is always a chance they turn around and drop an excellent Schoolboy Q album, but given the quality of Crash Talk and some of the misses the label has had in the past few years the future seems shaky for Q and TDE as a whole. 3.5/10
Best Track: Crash
For more rap check out my review of Kevin Abstract's Arizona Baby here.
