ScHoolboy Q

Alongside Kendrick Lamar, Jay Rock, and the rest of the Top Dawg Entertainment crew, ScHoolboy Q has become one of the definitive voices of 2010s rap. A descendant of gangsta tradition, he can be rough (“Break the Bank”), he can be funny (“There He Go”), and he can be bracingly introspective (“Blessed”). But like Snoop Dogg before him, the underlying note in Q’s music is a kind of hard-won fun, the resilience of someone who knows darkness but keeps swaggering toward the light. “Many nights I cry,” he told Apple Music in 2019. “You know what I’m saying? That’s why I try to stay away from sad music at this point in my life. Like, even listening to sad music. I’m tryna smile, bro.” Carefree, no. But that doesn’t mean he can’t live. Born Quincy Matthew Hanley in 1986, on a military base in Wiesbaden, Germany, Q grew up in South Central LA, connecting with Top Dawg and forming the Black Hippy collective with Kendrick Lamar, Jay Rock, and Ab-Soul in the late 2000s. Though the feel was thoroughly West Coast, the influences skewed East: 50 Cent, Biggie, Nas. And while he never took a turn for the self-consciously serious (Q was serious from the beginning), he’s grown mellower and more self-assured with time, an avid golfer and proud dad who still knows how to turn up. After a stream of critically acclaimed albums, Q took a five-year hiatus. In 2024, he returned with BLUE LIPS, an LP that was as dynamic as it was introspective. On tracks like “Blueslides,” he mourns the death of his friend Mac Miller. On “THank god 4 me,” he takes a moment to reflect on loyalty, respect, and self-gratitude, framing themes of mortality with the spirit of a repentant gangster at peace with life as he knows it.