Schoolboy Q – Habits and Contradictions

Listening to this album I feel like I’m reading the diary of a young man in the streets of his city, whether he’s having fun or is walking on the dark side.

One thing I really like here is that nothing feels forced, even the swag feels smooth and natural (whereas I remember some TI’s and Lil Wayne’s swag songs being horrendous).

Schoolboy comes back one year after his first album ‘Setbacks’ - which already contained a few gems -, with the same elements, the same urban sound and the same partners (He, Kendrick Lamar, Ab-Soul & Jay Rock are part of a group called the Black Hippies), only he is a little more daring.

It’s probably the way he puts his youth on the table that is so compelling. Through slow motion smoky soulful productions (‘Groove Line Pt1’) or claustrophobic tracks (‘Oxy Music’), Schoolboy makes his way with ease and confident street poetry (‘Sacrilegious’). And when you think he is just an attention-seeker (‘There he goes’), he does show some real audaciousness as he writes some darker pages with ‘Raymond 1969’ and ‘Nightmare on Fig St.’ He and Kendrick Lamar, always complementing each other well, produce some magic on the majestic ‘Blessed’. If you missed Jay Rock last year with his debut album ‘Follow me Home’, here’s a chance to see why he’s one of the greatest of this young generation with his gritty verse on ‘2 Raw’. West coast and East coast come together for the better on the dark and bright ‘Hands on the Wheel’, Schoolboy Q and ASAP Rocky being very much of the same kind.

Sure there’s some complacency that comes with youth; here and there are a few forgettable tracks, but I reckon ‘Habits & Contradictions’ will be a milestone in this new era of hip hop. Because it’s catching the spirit of a time. Everything’s on this album is saying: we’re gonna do it our way and enjoy it. It’s not asking anyone for a hand. What’s beautiful here is maybe the contrast between insouciance, freedom and a sense of gravity and at the end the realization that one doesn’t go without the other.

Truly, I don’t see any contradictions at all in ‘Habits & Contradictions’ and this is a good album to start 2012. The Black Hippies along with other artists like Danny Brown, ASAP Rocky, Tyler the Creator, Lil B, Whiz Khalifa, Smoke DZA, Currensy, have brought a new cool to Hip Hop, a new sensitivity flourishing outside of commercial constraints. The diamonds are the music itself here.