Schoolboy Q insists he will not sacrifice his vision in the interest of commercial appeal—no matter how much hate he might receive.
In a recent interview with Vulture, the TDE artist was asked about his creative process and the different ways his projects have been received. He first pointed to his 2016 Blank Face LP, which he admits was much too linear for his liking.
"That’s my biggest regret with Blank Face. Besides a couple songs, I just made the whole album pretty dark," he explained. "I regret that so much. Why did I do that? It was dope-ass shit. It was a great album [...] It didn’t do as well as [Oxymoron] either, because [Blank Face] was a one-listen album."
School explained that he likes his albums to present different sounds and vibes—which is what he aimed to do with his newly released project CrasH Talk. He was then asked if he ever feels pressured to create radio-friendly records that would potentially propel his albums. You can probably guess what his response was.
"No. I mean, if you’re gonna play ball, play ball. Don’t play around with it," he said. "Fuck these little internet dweebs. Every single I drop, don’t nobody like it. 'Collard Greens,' they hated it [...] 'Man of the Year,' everybody hates it. 'Studio' … We ain’t gonna talk about 'Studio.' I remember them saying I flopped with 'That Part,' and that shit went quadruple-platinum."
"That Part" served as the second single off Blank Face LP. The track received multiple platinum certifications, but drew polarizing reactions, with many claiming it did not deserve a Kanye West feature.
"Oh yeah. [Mimics a whiny voice] 'Kanye wasted a verse,'" Schoolboy said. "They were saying I paid Kanye. Bro, I never paid nobody for a verse in my life. It’s like little nerd dweebs [...] They hate every single I drop. I don’t get it. Whatever, the shit always crack. Every fucking single I drop goes platinum. I’m just trying to figure it out. What do you n***as really hate? Stop listening to it if you hate it."
Schoolboy also touches on the deaths of Mac Miller and Nipsey Hussle, negative press, and the TDE family.
"At the beginning, we were all just figuring each other out. But as soon we got together, we all clicked at the same time," he said. "We was just homies from the gate, like brothers and shit. Nobody was jealous of nobody else. It was just cool. The first person I got real close to was [Ab-]Soul, because he was the only one who smoked weed. Jay Rock don’t really smoke weed. He smoked, but nothing like that. Kendrick obviously a Puritan-ass n***a. [...] Our bond got tight really fast. Then Jay Rock and Kendrick were probably all at the same time. Then Kendrick made me his hype man. Then it was pretty much over from there."
You can read the full Vulture interview here.
