ScHoolboy Q – Oxymoron

February 25, 2014 • Top Dawg Entertainment

Is it just me, or did the hype for this album drop off dramatically after it came out? Maybe everyone else, like me, decided that it didn't really live up to their expectations. Like ScHoolboy's previous album, there are some good—even great—cuts on Oxymoron, but there are also plenty of bad ones, and listening to the album becomes a matter of slogging through and picking the good from the bad.

The cloud rap of Habits & Contradictions has been stripped down and filtered through modern west-coast production, leaving it with a very different feel to it; "Los Awesome" feels, to me, like an ultimate expression of LA culture (whether that's a good or bad thing is up to you, but regardless it's great in a very cheesy way). I've always been more of an east coast person, so this album doesn't always click with me, but even I have to admit that a lot of the beats are fantastic ("Studio", "Break the Bank", and "Hell of a Night" are a few standouts for me). It's also interesting that many of them have a sort of minimalist style like "What They Want" or "Hoover Street" that you wouldn't think works with the west coast aesthetic, but somehow it does anyway.

But there's a lot about this album I simply don't like. Plenty of the tracks are boring or amateur-sounding, like "What They Want" or "Blind Threats", which is a huge turn-off since that's what I came for and there were so many good beats on Habits. It's weird since there are also some beats that really click for me (e.g. "Prescription" and "The Purge") even though they're similar to the ones I don't like.

ScHoolboy's rapping itself feels a bit subpar as well, although I don't think I've ever been that fond of his style in the first place (on the other hand, the guest spots are pretty good). The hooks are especially bad, on just about every track with a hook; something about them is just grating to me. And while I normally manage to ignore lyrics, there is plenty of awfulness here on too many tracks to list.

What's interesting is that the more I listen to Oxymoron, the less I like it. Either that or giving it a very careful, critical listen for this review revealed a lot of things about it that I didn't notice before. Either way, I'm pretty sure at this point that this album is definitely a step down from the last one. While there are still some good tracks, it's not enough to make sitting through the rest really worth it.