Studio sessions can quickly escalate into full-blown functions, particularly in hip hop. He started working on Blank Face last June. All I do now is just chill.”ġ0) Sometime after the release of Oxymoron, Q commissioned the renovation of the house at the back of his property into a 1,000 square foot studio. I made some fucking money off the project, it helped me see that I needed to do more positive shit in life, and it made me into the person I am now. “My life did a whole 180 after dropped,” he said in a 2014 interview with NPR. It went on like this for a few years until Q dropped Setbacks - the album that changed everything. For a short time, he found employment as Kendrick Lamar’s hype man. Utterly broke, Q received a few dollars in food money each day from Joy’s mother and frequently slept at the studio where TDE recorded, ingratiating himself into the crew by force as he slowly found his voice as an emcee. In his early tapes, Q bit heavily off of 50 Cent’s vocal style and was still far from unlocking his full artistic potential. Though he was at first trash by his own admission, TDE co-founder Punch saw promise in him. He linked up with TDE through the engineer MixedByAli. “At a younger age, never really gave a shit Just my grandma arms, kept me out of harm Nigga went to class, my football pads Kept the burner stashed, they ain’t gon’ catch my ass”ĩ)Q started rapping seriously at age 21 after getting fired from the railroad. “ HIIIPOWER X HIPPY X HOOVER X HEAVEN & HELL AKA MY LIFE.” “wHy my H always capitalized?” he tweeted in 2011. He moonlighted briefly as a crack merchant but operated primarily in the highly lucrative Oxycontin industry. On the side - a variety of illicit hustles. He dropped out and took a job at the railroad. He attended multiple city colleges around Los Angeles and maintained a GPA high enough to keep him eligible to play on the football team. “Had roaches in my cereal, my uncle stole my stereo My grandma can’t control him”Ĩ) Q earned the nickname “ScHoolboy” from the 3.3 GPA he maintained up until his senior year at Crenshaw High School, when his increasing involvement with the Hoover Crips caused his grades to plunge. His uncle Pat was a crack addict who would routinely break into their house and steal Q’s bicycle, video games, anything of value. ‘Waddup Darlene.’ That’s just how we are.”ħ)Born Quincy Hanley, Q grew up in South Central LA a few miles south of Staples Center the only child of a hard-working single mother. “We greet each other by our mommas’ names. “Soon as see each other, first word we might say is ‘you a bitch.’ ‘Waddup bitch. Q credits his mother for roasting him when he was a child and building up his thick skin. “That dumbass shouldn’t have gotten at that motherfucker in the first place,” he said, fighting back tears. When Peter Rosenberg brought up Jay Rock’s motorcycle accident that left his leg broken in three places, Q burst into laughter. He roasts Isaiah Rashad for driving a hatchback. He roasts Action Bronson for being obese. I’m not cool with it.”Ħ) No man, woman, child, or animal is safe from the deadly roasting ability of ScHoolboy Q. “You get to chill, relax, shit like that,” he explains. He has a pool in the back and he parks his McLaren out front behind the gate. “Soccer dad Saturdays,” he calls them.ĥ)Q lives with Joy in Tarzana, a breezy, quiet suburb nestled in the hills of the San Fernando Valley, 28 miles northeast of the neighborhood he grew up in. Q spends his weekends ferrying her to and from soccer games in his McLaren. She scored over 30 goals in 10 games last year and was named the MVP of her team. She is seven years old now and a blossoming soccer star. Within a year, he and his girlfriend at the time welcomed into the world a daughter named Joy. Blank Face LP hones in on the remorseless “Groovy Tony” side of his personality (“heart is an igloo”) and the time around the robbery that would briefly land him in jail.Ĥ) When Q got out of jail, he decided to have a kid so he’d have a reason to never go back. His 2014 major label debut Oxymoron, which opened at #1, delved into his addiction to prescription drugs. His 2012 sophomore album Habits & Contradictions was a prequel to Setbacks. At this point, he had already come up with the titles of his next four albums and the themes they would each address. He was active in gang culture up until four months prior to the release of his debut album Setbacks in 2011. Nearly all of Q’s music refers to the period of his life between the ages of 16 and 23, the prime of his gangbanging days. “I’m not a gangster, none of that shit no more. 3)Q, 29, is a gangster rapper - his gangster days are behind him.
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