There are two things ScHoolboy Q has been trying to wrap his head around.
One of them is the success of Blue Lips, the rapper’s sixth album and first in nearly five years, released earlier this month. The South Central Los Angeles rapper with storied backgrounds as both a Crip and a golfer returned with a vengeance on Blue Lips, an exquisite display of his genre’s range and depths. Q bounces from madness to tranquility through lush, rapid beat switch-ups and stylish cadences, often in a single song, like standout “THank God 4 Me” (Q religiously capitalizes the ‘H’ in every word he writes). Other tracks, like “Lost Times,” “Blueslides,” and “Cooties,” are calmer and kaleidoscopic in their overviews and minutiae of his accomplishments, relationships, regrets, and commitments. It’s art-house rap that rides its maturity with edge, and it’s earned rave reviews from Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, Vulture, his fans, and peers in entertainment, like Apple Music’s Nadeska Alexis and LeBron James.
“I don’t know, it still feel a little off, a little weird,” Q, born Quincy Hanley, tells me over Zoom, his lightly tattooed arms folded over each other as he leans into the camera. He spent some of the morning at the gym, Moosa Tiffith, co-president of Q’s also-storied, L.A. label Top Dawg Entertainment, told me. Q’s now in a crisp white T-shirt and baseball cap, a uniform of sorts. His youngest daughter’s commotion in the background occasionally makes his ears perk up. He continues: “Because it’s out there and I don’t know how to … I feel like out of all my albums, it’s been getting the most praise, so it’s a little overwhelming, too. I really don’t know how to feel, but I feel a little relief though.”
Blue Lips is a culmination of 15 years of devotion to rap, which also bore Q two Best Rap Album Grammy nods, for 2014’s Oxymoron and 2016’s Blank Face. He describes the devotion as more compulsive than romantic. “I was born to do it. I got a mic right here,” he says pulling it into the frame. “I was literally just rapping.” He’s working out an idea so embryonic he’s unwilling to share it.
As a younger man, Q tried his hand at what he watched Outkast, Snoop Dogg, Nas, Biggie Smalls, Tupac Shakur, and Jay-Z do (“I’m born in ’86. I’m the typical rap fan,” he says plainly). He got a good grip on it in 2009, and then never let go. Now, Blue Lips seemed to have facilitated his first real hang with Jay-Z. In February, after posting on X (formerly Twitter) that he wished he could play the album for Hov (something he had said before, in 2021), he soon shared that it actually happened. “HipHop twitter actually came tHru,” he wrote.
How did the Jay playback go? “He heard it, he loved it, and shit. After that, we started talking about boxing,” Q says with a snicker.
“We realized that we both was into boxing and shit. But he loved it, you know what I’m saying? Gave me praises. Sometimes when you have conversations with certain people … especially that being our first time really kicking it, I don’t want to say too much; just keep the conversation our personal conversation. It was my moment, you know what I mean? I don’t want to always give everything because maybe I can rap about it one day.” Fair enough.
The second thing Q had been thinking about, seemingly for the past few years, is how to devote himself to making music meticulously and keep listeners homed in on an album in a time when songs are made out to be worth penny fractions, and attention spans have shrunk to 60-second intervals.
“I feel like people like me were kind of like … [we] don’t know where we fit in this type of world, so talking through the art only can be tough sometimes, but I felt like I went up to bat first for all the hard motherfuckers that’s sitting back.” He shares a sentiment that echoes his friend Tyler, the Creator’s recent critique of artist interviews reflecting the way music has been systematically devalued (“We need to get back to talking about music. We need to stop fucking going sneaker shopping or deep-throating chicken wings for an hour,” was the circulated soundbite he later elaborated on.)
“Even with media, it’s like, where do you go to talk about just the music?” Q says to me, without evoking Tyler. “They always want to ask you other questions that have nothing to do with the album. You put years into this album, then they ask you some shit that’s just random as fuck, and you like, ‘What?’” He says it takes “antics” to promote music these days, and that may be why some folks have fallen back: “Everybody’s just like, ‘This shit is kind of weird.’”
Blue Lips is the first rap album of the year to garner widespread acclaim without a polarizing draw (yes, this is a Vultures sub). Here, Q talks about what went into making it while trying to be a present father, the feedback he got from his daughters and Black Hippie comrades (Kendrick Lamar, Jay Rock, Ab-Soul), and how little room the industry is leaving for projects like it.
Ab-Soul, of course, is on the album, but what were your conversations on it with him, Kendrick Lamar, and Jay Rock like?
They all loved it. Dot called me and told me, “Congrats.” He told me he ran it three times in a row, loved it, thought it was super, super hard. Soul loved it. He’s calling me “the Artist” now or something. Rock loved it. All the homies loved it. I put a lot of time into this shit, man. I think they’ve been seeing me try to pretty much make this album my whole career. I feel like I made it. I finally made an album I’ve been trying to make. It feels really good.
When you say you’ve been trying to make this album your whole career, what does it achieve that you’ve always been trying to do?
The pocket and the maturity, the style of rapping, the beats, the execution, the confidence. Just going in and just making an album with freedom, pretty much. That shit just feels good. I wanted to do it like this. I wanted this to sound like that. Everybody OK’d it, and that’s all you really want as an artist, like shit. Especially after you done so much. In order for me to even keep doing this shit and stay into it, I have to keep being interested. Once I get uninterested, then it’s over. That’s the scary thing, too. Making this album was super necessary for me because I wasn’t really interested in a lot of other sounds and stuff.
Do you think it’s even possible for people who are coming up in the industry now to really just focus on making a full body of work and putting it out, like you have?
A new artist, no, because they’re going to make you — if you’re on a major anyway — they’re going to probably try to get you a song that’s streaming well, and then do all these versions and shit to it. It’s tough. I know artists will still be able to pop off, but the form of making an album, I don’t know. It’s eight versions of songs — if you catch one, they’re going to put eight versions out, and once you got eight versions out of one song, it’s like, “Damn, where the fuck the album go?” Artists are going to be more single-driven now, more than anything. I feel like music is going to go if we don’t keep putting albums out.
You even had a tweet saying that the rap industry is “firing” people. What do you mean by that?
I mean, literally all these people at these labels, they’re just firing them, bro.
Oh, you mean the major layoffs that have been happening?
Yeah, they don’t need people for certain things no more. They like, “Fuck it, bye.” That’s where rap is right now, where they’re just cutting everything because we don’t … Unfortunately, people don’t buy music like that in our genre. We stream a lot, but people don’t buy music. Unfortunately, this is the type of shit that’s going to happen. It just is what it is. I would love to try to figure out how we can fix it. I’m just one person, but if somebody has suggestions and shit, for motherfuckers to come to the table and figure something out, that would be dope. I don’t really know for sure what’s going on, but how we could fix it? I know we can try in some way.
Yeah, it’s tough. I think the thing that your album raises as such a beautiful body of work is that there may not be the conditions in the industry for people to create like that right now. [Ye, formerly Kanye West] has been saying he’s only going to sell his album on his website. Some artists are turning to other platforms outside of streaming, too. Does that feel like it could help? Have you been seeing that? Do you have thoughts on it?
I don’t know about all that. One part of me says, “Yeah, it should only be sold,” but then at the same time, some kids grew up just off streaming, they didn’t grow up off buying shit. We got to accept that too. But it’s weird for me. I always got to remind myself that I was doing this shit when I had zero fans, you know what I’m saying? When I was making no money. If I never got to this point, I would still be doing it for free.
Part of me is like, “I should be doing this shit for free anyway,” but also part of me is like, “If they don’t buy music, it’s probably going to keep going the way it’s going.”
You said, on the podcast Back on Figg, that there were things that you were saying on the album that you wanted to make sure that you were also living. What are those things?
Being lazy. Say I go hard one day, and then the rest of the day won’t do shit. Sometimes that’s not fair to everybody else. That can turn to neglect. That’s a family thing. When I’m talking about being a family person, I have to live up to those words because sometimes you get lost in the music, and then your family misses out on you. Things like that, just being more present. I give myself just a window of working and I work really, really hard doing that window, and after that, I don’t deal with it at all. I’ll go home and be with my family and shit, and chill and kick it. Then, when it’s time to work, just treat it like a job, but the job that I love.
[But] if I don’t have nothing, don’t show up. Just don’t waste time. I would waste a lot of time searching for things when I probably shouldn’t even be searching, sometimes just being in the studio too much. Sometimes it’s best to just write the ideas down and not go to the studio, you know what I’m saying? I would go to the studio every day, and with no care or no inspiration or nothing It’s like that’s wasting time, wasting talent. That’s why songs like “Time killers” and shit are made. Just got to live by these words.
Another song that I was thinking about a lot is “Lost Times,” because you’ve mentioned that it was really seminal to you understanding where the album was going and what it was.
Yeah, that was the first song recorded for the album. I recorded it in the pandemic, 2020. That was just me yelling at the wall. Hearing somebody just hating on me, and I was just like, “Oh, word? All right, cool.” I got a call, somebody I knew that was just hating on me, so I just went to the booth. Instead of doing all the other dumb shit. Like I said, don’t waste time. I could have went on Twitter or Instagram, yelled at my phone: “Oh, who you talking to? Fuck you.” But it’s like, “Nah, that’s my life. Put it on paper and put it on the mic.” I ain’t about to waste no argument on the phone.
I think that one of the things that I like a lot about the album is that it does feel very multifaceted. There are these different parts of you. I’ve seen you describe Blank Face as an amazing gangsta album, and it does feel very cinematic, but it feels more like one story. This, on the other hand, is going into a bunch of different directions.
This album is summing up the first half of my career, just like the start of a new slate for me, like a new Q, because I got 18 more albums to make. I want to stay in that mode and keep creating. This is the second phase, and I’m going to have a third phase, a fourth phase, a fifth phase. Blue Lips is an extension of my life. It’s past, present, and future. I did this, I did that. I feel ashamed for saying this, but it’s all good. That’s why Blue Lips means so much.
You’ve shared a definition of Blue Lips that includes “shocked, speechless, or embarrassed,” but also related it to “coonin’.” Tell me about that part of the definition.
I keep using this example: So I’m doing a golf commercial, and they’re like, “Yo, put your grill in.” It’s like, what does that mean? What if I told the Asian guy to bring his chopsticks or some shit? You know what I’m saying? What the fuck? “Go put your grill in.” It’s just like, “Make sure you Black.” What the fuck?
It was just weird shit and I would do it. I’ve done it, and then one time I just didn’t do it. Any fucking thing I did with golf, they would try to make me be extra Black, you know what I’m saying? “Be Black.” Motherfucker, I’m already Black. Then, me just doing it, knowing it, and then being like, “Why would he say that?” That’s coonin’.
It’s an interview where I say I want all white people to say the n-word at my show. It’s like, that was me at a certain age. Now, at 37, I don’t feel like that anymore. You know what I’m saying? I wasn’t educated enough. You get older and you educate yourself on certain things and you realize maybe that wasn’t the right thing for me to say. Why not admit it instead of being silent about it?
I always rap about not doing drugs. Since I’ve been not doing drugs, I make songs about not doing drugs, and I’m going to constantly do it because I put it out there that I’m faded and I’m fucked up. I think I owe it to put that much back into the music, too. You know what I’m saying? That’s the whole thing about the coonin’ thing too, is just manning up to and owning up to it. That’s why you get songs like “Druggies Wit Hoes ‘Foux.’” We’re talking about the backlash of being on drugs and having hoes. That shit can get depressing.
Yeah, I’m about to go crazy. I hope I don’t take five years.
Tell me why Blue Lips took five years then.
Two years was kind of capped because it was pandemic. The shit shut down, so that was a false year. I pretty much crafted it in a year, and after that we were just messing with it, just messing with the beats and shit, having fun, I would say, trying to figure out how we can make an album that don’t sound like the rest of them.
The last year or two is really just perfecting it.
Yeah, you can say that. Coming up with visuals, just figuring out when I want to put this shit out. Certain things were dropping and I was just like, “I don’t want to drop in this climate.” Top of the year, not a lot of shit dropping, and I had something to say and I just wanted people to hear me out. You know what I’m saying? For the last couple of years, I felt like it was just a lot of noise, no disrespect to nobody. Not saying nobody dropped good music, because it was good music, but I’m just saying there was just so much going on, even just media. I’m just trying to put all this effort and time into this album, and then all this shit is going on, wars, shootings, presidential shit. It’s just mad shit going on, and I just wanted people to hear me. I felt like now was a time for people to hear me, and I felt like the people heard me.
There’s a war going on right now, though. There was just a shooting at the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl victory parade. There’s always noise. I wonder if at a point in time you just got to be like, “This feels right to me.”
Yeah, I think it’s just a feeling, too. I can act like I know what’s going on. You know what I’m saying? For the most part, it’s just a feeling. Like my homeboy says,”God is the architect.” It just felt right.
Your daughters have come up a couple of times. I know one is really young, but the other is a teenager. How does she feel about your music?
Yeah, my teenager, she likes it. She’s learning how to play bass and learning how to play some tunes on it. My five-year-old, she likes stuff, but her favorite thing is just when she hears my voice: “That’s you, that’s you, that’s you.” But I don’t really play my music like that in front of my family. When I’m with them, I try to leave that in the [studio] type shit. Because that’s part of the problem of my parenting, you know what I mean? Music getting in the way. I really don’t play them shit unless she asks. Or sometimes, if I’m just super locked in, I’ll be playing something and I’ll let her listen. But for the most part, I try to keep it separate; I try my best to. You got to be present.
There are some references on the albums to parenting, but I also think about the music videos where you incorporate your childhood home videos. It made me wonder how you think about the contrast between how they’re growing up and how you grew up.
I mean, it’s completely different. My kids from Calabasas [California]. It’s just completely different. It’s a proud feeling, too, though, to give them something better than what I had. Can’t nobody take that away from me. More than anything, I really did something I love, people blessed me for it, and I was able to bless my kids. Hopefully, I keep it going and we keep it going, period, with the family. Hopefully, both of my little kids are successful.
But does your art help your older girl understand where you came from?
She knows, but it’s like we don’t really talk about it too much. I’m always trying to go forward. I really don’t talk about my past. I don’t dwell on things like, “Oh, back in the day I was …” I’m not really that guy. Every now and then I talk. We mainly talk sports. My daughter’s super into sports, so we only really talk sports. My oldest, that’s pretty much all she’s really interested in: sports and music.
That makes sense. In 21 Savage’s Rolling Stone cover story, he said the same thing, that he doesn’t really play his music with his kids and keeps who he is in work and as a dad separate.
As rappers, we got to accept — and people should accept us [this way], too — bro, we also are entertainers. They take our shit so literal. They’re using lyrics in court and shit. Motherfucker, we are entertainers. We have to learn how to separate it. When it’s time to entertain, entertain and do that, and when it’s time to not, cut that shit off and be a dad.
So I saw that you’ve been ranking your songs and albums on X. If you had to rank your top five Blue Lips songs right now, what would you say?
Fuck. That’s tough. Right now, I would say the intro, “Funny Guy,” because it eliminates if you’re not going to like the album off the rip. If your ear is not tuned to track number one, you’re probably not going to like that album. It was a deal breaker for me. It’s like, “Let’s get them locked in right now or get they ass out. We don’t even want ‘em here.” I did it, me and TaeBeast. Four, “Nunu,” because why the fuck did I rap on that? I don’t know, but I did it and that shit’s hard. Three, I would say “Lost Times,” because that’s the first record. Two, I would say “Cooties,” one of the best songs I’ve ever written, and “Blueslides” number one. That’s probably the best-written song. Yeah, probably my best-written song. “Cooties” and “Blueslides” are like … It’s hard to do something perfect, but I really feel like when it comes to execution, the way I wanted to do something, those are two perfect songs that I fucking executed.
I’d love to end talking about “Blueslides.” We talked about noise. I feel like even music can feel noisy, and I think that you do more loud, riotous music in an artistic way, but I really love the calm moments, like “Blueslides.” A lot of people’s minds immediately went to Mac Miller, who you were close to. Is this a tribute? Is this inspired by him?
No, it’s not about Mac, not inspired by Mac. Everything I do ain’t about Mac. You know what I’m saying? You know what I mean? I don’t want to exploit my homeboy. I’m not that type of guy. That’s why I never really say names and shit. It’s a coincidence that he has an album called Blue Slide Park, but I think people forget that I have a Crip background, so me saying Blueslides or Blue Lips …
Sometime I think people will be searching for the Mac thing. I lost a lot of homies, you know what I’m saying? But in reality, I was talking about all of them because I did lose four homies to drugs. I was mentioning all of them. “Lost homeboys,” it didn’t sound as good as “lost a homeboy.” It relates to four of my friends. That kind of low-key do irk me because people be trying to throw it, and it’s like, man, not to throw Mac aside, because he live forever, but I’m not here to exploit my homeboy. You know what I’m saying? I’m not here to do that.
Yeah, I feel that. When I saw that connection being made by other people, it didn’t feel exploitative, but I totally understand. You’re like, “That’s my real life friend. I’m not referencing him in some subliminal way to get people to talk about it.”
Yeah. Because I think that’s nasty work when people do stuff like that. That’s nasty work. I’m not into that type of work. Sometimes it’s for the listener to take what they take from it, and who am I to say what you took from something? Even if somebody do say, “Oh, I get Mac from this,” it’s like, “All right, that’s what you wanted to feel. But if we going really in depth, no, I wasn’t talking about Mac.”
I would love to end on a brighter note, but there’s been so many really bright parts of this conversation, anyway.
Yeah. Keep pushing art forward and ride with shit. Talk about shit and ride with shit that you like. You know what I mean? Simple as that. Keep pushing the shit forward, because if not, more bullshit will be made. You know what I’m saying? Push the dope shit forward.