Schoolboy Q

As the days draw nearer to ScHoolboy Q‘s imminent album Blank Face, the 29-year-old rapper has been doing the media rounds, dropping new music, videos and information about his upcoming album and plenty more. Here’s a roundup of everything Q:

Overnight has come the video clip for Tookie Knows II: Part (2), a dramatic clip which runs for nearly nine minutes, and serves as the follow-up to last week’s By Any Means (Part 1). Tookie Knows II is the final track on his upcoming album and features the second half of last  week’s video. We witness a harrowing robbery, followed by Q getting arrested and imprisoned. Much likes its predecessor, the video ends with a “to be continued” note. It’s interesting to see the approach he’s taking to these video clips – I wonder how many more will be released to continue the narrative.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSb6-ppf7fw

Q also took the time to preview his album at a listening party in New York, during which he was interviewed by host Peter Rosenberg, from Hot 97 radio. One of the most interesting reveals to have come from the questions concerns Miguel‘s upcoming feature on the album – a feature which was apparently not chosen by the artist, who claims that his label “made” him add him onto the track Overtime, which also features Justine Skye.

According to enough tweets to make it worth listening to, he said, “It’s a bootleg ass studio song. They made me put it on the album,” going on to compare it to Studio, from his 2014 record Oxymoron.

According to Billboard, there were a number of new tidbits learnt on the night. Speaking about more album features, he revealed that Groovy Tony now has a new guest verse from Jadakiss. He goes on to talk about how his features also include E-40, Mobb Deep and Dogg Pound, noting, “If y’all noticed, I always get OGs on my albums… I usually don’t fuck with young ni**as.” However, there is an appearance from 22-year-old Vince Staples on Roll Out.

One song called John Muir hits home especially hard for Q. The song is named after his Los Angeles school, which he attended at the time he was first introduced to gang life, and in which he speaks about using a gun at age 13 and selling drugs at 14. “The beginning of me fucking with my homies from the hood,” he said. “The beginning of me stealing, robbing, getting beat up, jackin’ ni**as, getting jacked, the whole nine.”

ScHoolboy also visited Hot 97 proper for an on-air interview this week. In it, we get to know a bit more about the man himself: he hates tomato sauce, he only likes emojis if females send them to him. He speaks about his 7-year-old daughter, about Mac Miller (and his yellow teeth), and Black Hippy, his legendary supergroup featuring Kendrick Lamar, Ab-Soul and Jay Rock. He reveals that another Black Hippy album is unlikely. “We’re so busy, the only time we kick it is in the studio, we’d be wasting thousands of dollars…we’d just talk for hours, we don’t even wanna rap no more, when you don’t see your boys in forever, it’s just jokes.” He speaks about getting Kanye West on the record, and about being star struck when meeting Jay Z. “When I first met Jay Z, he was like ‘what up?’ I’m like, I don’t even know what to say, I had to walk away… I don’t know what to say to fuckin’ Jay Z! How can I have a conversation with Jay Z?”

The full video is well worth a watch – Q is seriously hilarious, and the interviewer is cracking up throughout.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trdR243rFW4&feature=youtu.be

Finally in today’s ScHoolboy roundup is a fresh performance on Late Night With Stephen Colbert. Watch him bring THat Part to life (sans Kanye West):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oNAYx6JVXQ

ScHoolboy Q’s Blank Face comes out next week on July 8, via Top Dawg Entertainment/Interscope.

Image: TDE/Youtube