New Music – The Invisible Man

Blank Face LP is the newest sophomore album coming from the “Gangsta Crip” Schoolboy Q, who was able to give Top Dawg Entertainment (TDE) their first number one debut album with his past release Oxymoron. Blank Face seems to pick up where Oxymoron left off, only that Oxymoron seemed to step on and off with the right foot while Blank Face LP feels like it took several graceful, wonderful, and actually progressive steps before falling down and was unable to get back up again.

The older brother of Blank Face LP, Oxymoron captured so much about what made Schoolboy Q such a loveable artist. His dark, aggressive rhymes rapped over some intricate and creative beats. Oxymoron did have a few songs that weren’t as good as the others, but overall the album was outstanding and that is what surprised me most about Blank Face LP. The fact that Schoolboy Q has proved that he deserves to have listeners and that he can create some down to the core great songs. I just feel that Blank Face LP was a step forward in the production aspect, but the overall lyrics were pretty lackluster and just did not deliver on most ends.

Schoolboy Q is a great lyricist and not only can he have some really powerful sounding hooks/verses, but also his rhyme scheme and how he goes about actually making a song is incredible. The strength and message he conveys seems so personal and such a great way to tap into what it is like being a gangster and doing what you need to survive on the hard streets of Los Angeles or in America even. These personal accounts are where Schoolboy Q thrives, this is also where Blank Face LP falls way below what Q could actually do. Out of my six or seven listens I could only find about five or six actual punchlines or verses that stuck out in the entire album. The song “Ride Out” has a great bar from Q describing “My knuckles filled with teeth.”

This was the aggressive nature that I thought Q would deliver more, do not think that Blank Face LP is all bad because it really is not. The song “Kno Ya Wrong” is a great addition to Blank Face LP and it sounds like it taps into some of the Golden Age of Hip-Hop music. The second part of “Kno Ya Wrong” is also interesting as it describes how much Schoolboy Q had to work to achieve what he has done in his life so far. Even including lyrics like “I’m sold out on everything, Last night, it was a dream.” This is a great bar and it is personal and endearing, this is the Schoolboy Q that I fell in love with as an artist and who could really hold his own on an album. More of this type of lyrics and less of this “Style on top of style, nigga, Five years I’ve been rich, nigga, Drove Beamers down Fig, nigga.”

Speaking of “THat Part,” this is easily the worst song on the entire project. The instrumental is interesting as it shifts from faster to slowed down and the use of the hi-hats to illustrate this created a promising foundation, all it needed was a killer verse from Q and Kanye and the song was golden. “THat Part” is one of those songs that falls not only flat on its face, but it falls through the earth all the way to the core. It really is a terrible song and I am sorry but I will most likely never think so otherwise. The Hook is not great, and Kanye’s “verse” has now become a joke to anyone I meet that has heard this song. It is good to hear it once just to experience it, then never listen to it again.

The other song that I have to talk about is “Big Body,” now this song is actually a pretty good and has some interesting use of jazz style. It uses some saxophone and the disco-centric claps and cymbals are great behind Q’s verse, but the chorus actually made me laugh when I first heard it. “Big Body, Big Benz” is shouted over and over and it sounds like the song could have been better without the hook entirely. If the hook was ditched, I think this would have been my favorite song. The song “Groovy Tony” is another great song and was also released as a single along with “THat Part.” Now this song compared to the other single is actually incredible and it captures the spirit of the old hardcore Schoolboy Q that I remember. The “Most die before they hear it, turn a nigga to a spirit,” lyric is so tight and just captures that “Wow” factor that Schoolboy Q had. It is still there, just not nearly as a present as it was in Oxymoron.

Blank Face LP seems like a step forward production wise, but as I said it steps back from the darkness that Q presided with in Oxymoron, and while the album feels more jazz influenced, at the same time it also feels more mainstream and not as “Gangster Rap” orientated as the first album. Blank Face LP has some great elements and outlines of an outstanding album, but in the end it just wasn’t all there and maybe next time Schoolboy Q can capture what made his music so lovable and interesting.