Schoolboy Q spends “Cooties,” the eighth track on his sixth studio album, Blue Lips, marveling at the dimensions of the box he’s put himself in. “I know the feeling of being trapped from all the things that you built,” he yelps before ping-ponging between the spoils and troubles of the last 13 years. He’s working through trauma while dealing with haters; relishing the “house on the hill” where his daughters play soccer and he puffs ganja in the vestibule, but also worrying about school shootings and memories of betrayal. These are the nightmares of the outside world for Black folks folding into the creature comforts afforded by his rap stardom, and the paranoia and pride fight for space in the staggered elegance of Q’s delivery over scuzzy bass and drum slaps. As a whole, Blue Lips viciously prods at this sweet spot between comfort and anguish.
If 2019’s CrasH Talk was the kickback where Q leisurely took stock of his position in life, then Blue Lips is a thumping raucous night out with the homies chased with a shot of existential dread. The album’s title refers to the phenomenon of being shocked into speechlessness, and over a decade into his journey, he remains shocked at all the fans, accolades, and prestige he’s racked up. But instead of the occasionally maudlin poolside reflection of CrasH Talk, Blue Lips fully embraces the dissonance of pairing the morose with the manic. Q sounds like he needs to get all his ideas out in case he won’t have the chance to do it again. Every side of the California rapper—the former Hoover Street Crip, the iced-out spitter, the horny golf-playing father of two—is given room to stretch and ruminate and stomp his way across the rawest and most adventurous music of his career.
More than any other Top Dawg Entertainment artist, Q has thrived on hairpin musical turns. 2014’s Oxymoron and 2016’s Blank Face LP, in particular, are constantly molting, revealing a delicate ear for sequencing that brings variety while helping the experience stick to the ribs. He may not reach the conceptual heights of a Kendrick, but he doesn’t need to. He’s supremely gifted at balancing party jams and grizzled storytelling tracks with cinematic flair. Blue Lips keeps that structure while being bolder and weirder. Songs like the Rico Nasty-featuring “Pop” end abruptly and smash cut into the next without warning; songs that have smoother mass-appeal tendencies grind up against unvarnished soul loops and trippy drum ’n bass freakouts. The slinking “Movie” is ceded entirely to LA rapper AzChike, who turns it into a creaking Cali street rap funhouse. Intro track “Funny Guy,” with its trilling flutes and technicolor guitars and choir, sounds more like an Avalanches B-side than anything a disciple of Kurupt or Suga Free might touch, yet here Q is, crooning about money bags, sex, and kicking rowdy fans out of venues. There’s a bracing, madcap quality to Blue Lips, proof that he still knows how to surprise listeners by folding off-kilter influences into head-nodders and rocket fuel.