Oxymoron (Schoolboy Q album)

Schoolboy Q enlisted collaborators such as Kendrick Lamar, 2 Chainz, ASAP Rocky, Jay Rock, Tyler, the Creator and Kurupt, among others. The album's production was handled by high-profile record producers such as Boi-1da, The Alchemist, Mike Will Made It, Clams Casino, Nez & Rio, DJ Dahi and Pharrell, as well as others, including members of Top Dawg Entertainment's in-house production teams Digi+Phonics and THC.


Oxymoron received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised its haunting production and Schoolboy Q's aggressive lyrics. The album was also a commercial success, debuting at number one on the US Billboard 200, selling 139,000 copies in its first week of release. It additionally peaked highly on the main album charts in Canada, New Zealand, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. The album received a nomination at the 2015 Grammy Awards for Best Rap Album.


The album was supported by four official singles: "Collard Greens", "Man of the Year", "Studio" and "Hell of a Night", as well as the promotional singles "Yay Yay" and "Break the Bank". To date, "Studio" is his highest-charting song as a lead artist peaking at number 38 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart. Schoolboy Q also toured the United States and Europe on the Oxymoron World Tour, with Isaiah Rashad and Vince Staples.

Background[edit]

In June 2012, Schoolboy Q revealed he had begun working on his major label debut, announcing that he would be the second member of Black Hippy, to release his commercial debut with Interscope Records, following Kendrick Lamar's Good Kid, M.A.A.D City.^[1] In a November 2012 interview, Schoolboy Q expressed: "Kendrick [Lamar] left me no choice but to drop a classic", referring to Lamar's album Good Kid, M.A.A.D City and its impact on his own respective major label debut.^[2] In the third part of that exclusive interview, Schoolboy Q revealed he would be releasing another project in 2012, preceding his major label debut, which was scheduled for an early 2013 release.^[3] The other project he was planning to release before the end of 2012 was set to be a mixtape, however in December 2012, Schoolboy Q tweeted he had changed his mind and was going to focus on his debut album.^[4]

Music and lyrics[edit]

At a February 2014 listening session for the album, Schoolboy Q spoke on the album's opening track: "When I first made ['Gangsta'] all I wanted to say was that my grandma showed me my first strap. That's all I wanted to put in the song. I just thought that was so gangsta. It was kind of weird, too, now that I really think about it. She used to take her bullets out of the gun and leave the clip in her room and let me play with her gun. I was an only child so I probably got on her nerves that much that she finally gave me her burner, like, 'Here, get the fuck out my face.' [Laughs] I just wanted to say that so bad."^[41] He also added on how he incorporated one of his neighborhood friends on to the record: "[I was also able to] speak on my homeboy Rat Tone. He's one of my big homies from my hood. He showed me my first [AK-47] when I was like 11-years-old. I was amazed by it. I thought that shit was tight. They used to have all the shiny shit. That's how we talked. We would call a gun 'fly.' Like, 'Your dickies is cut super perfect and they got the right amount of dirt on them. That shit is fly."^[41]


During the same listening session, Schoolboy Q spoke on the Pharrell-produced "Los Awesome", which features his TDE label-mate Jay Rock: "['Los Awesome' featuring Jay Rock] is gangsta shit. It ain't one of them melodic muthafuckas like you about to fall in love. This some gang bangin' shit.^[41] He also expressed he felt the track was necessary for the album: "I needed to get that one out the way on my album. I needed something that the gang bangers could identify with. Not so much my core fans, more so the gang members."^[41]


In February 2014, during a Q&A session for the album, at SONOS Studios in Los Angeles, California, Schoolboy Q described the song "Prescription/Oxymoron", as the most personal: "I came up selling OxyContin," he said. "The karma behind it was that I never took an OxyContin before but I did get addicted to Percocets, Xanax, Codeine—shit like that. When my daughter was one and two [years old], I used to get into sleep comas, like 'Xan comas'—just dead to the world and I put it into the music."^[42] Schoolboy Q said he arranged the song to juxtapose the process of selling prescription pills and addiction: "I put the OxyContin and selling it at the end of the relapse or the addiction," he said. "I sold OxyContin and then I got addicted [to pills]. This way, I showed that I got addicted then I sold it. That was a crazy record. That's true shit—the first part of it when my daughter tried to wake me up and I was dead to the world. That was my little secret. I always had the cup with me. They just never knew I had a gang of pills in the other bottle. That was a little story about me and how I was addicted, too."^[42]