Southern Plug Magazine: Leaders of the New School 2017 Volume 2 Issue 1 A | Page 49

Mixing bud smokers' anthems with socially conscious
numbers, rapper ScHoolboy Q spent three years in
the mixtape underground before launching his career
properly in 2011. The first mixtape, the
autobiographical Schoolboy Turned Hustla, landed in
2008 and quickly caught the attention of Kendrick
Lamar and Top Dawg Entertainment. Lamar would
form the Black Hippy collective with ScHoolboy along
with Jay Rock and Ab-Soul, and the Top Dawg label
would sign the artist. His Gangster & Soul mixtape
landed in 2009, and Top Dawg released his official
debut, Setbacks, in 2011. In 2012, Top Dawg
announced they had signed a joint venture deal with
Interscope and Aftermath, which saw Lamar's debut
album get a full release. Later that year, ScHoolboy Q
announced he was recording his third album and
would be the second member of Black Hippy to
benefit from the deal. After a series of mysterious
tweets in 2013, Q announced that the release would
be called Oxymoron, but nearly a year passed before
the dark and abstract album -- which featured a
whole host of guest producers and vocalists -- was
released in February 2014. Nevertheless, it debuted
at number one on the Billboard 200 and pushed the
single "Studio" into the Top 40. A worldwide tour
took up most of 2015, and 2016 saw the "That Part"
single drop as a preview of that year's album, Blank
Face LP, which debuted at number two.