#TBT: Early ScHoolboy Q

ScHoolboy Q benefited early in his career from his association with Kendrick Lamar, Jay Rock, and Ab-Soul. The fearsome foursome known as Biack Hippy cultivated a supportive yet competitive atmosphere, not unlike that of sports team (possibly the Spurs), that pushed Q, the last member to join, to great heights. Look where he is now; his new album Blank Face LP is one of the best albums of the year to date.

This list extends as far as 2011, when Q dropped his debut album Setbacks in January and the Black Hippy posse cut "Say Wassup" a few months later. Read HNHH's profile on Q and click through the gallery to listen to 10 of his best tracks from the opening chapter of his career.

Q was 22 years old when he released his debut mixtape ScHoolboy Turned Hustla in 2008. He had only begun taking rapping seriously the prior year and his delivery lacks the sort of tenacity and precision it would later demonstrate on Blank Face LP. Q's style at this stage of his career heavily resembled that of 50 Cent.

Q came heavy with the burns though: "You're a disgrace to LA, just sorta like the Clippers."

Q made great strides as an artist between his first tape and the release of his second tape Gangsta & Soul a year later. Not just in terms of delivery, but as a storyteller. Within the first line, he indicates that he feels both uncertain and excited about his involvement in gang culture. His self-awareness is evident.

ScHoolboy had a short-lived beef with 40 Glocc in 2009 after Glocc talked bad about Tyga, whom ScHoolboy was tight with back in the day, and acted harder than he actually was (in Q's estimation). The beef culminated when Q dropped a diss track called "Ezell" (40 Glocc Killa). The highlight of the song is when he calls Glocc a "Youtubin' ass nigga/ False-banging pussy old faggot ass nigga." The Game would be proud.

Q has referred to this Black Hippy freestyle over A Tribe Called Quest as "my first dope verse" -- the one where he first really impressed the rest of TDE.

"It's still mediocre, or whatever, but that was dope to them and to me because I was never rapping like that," he told NPR in 2014. "I remember everybody in the studio like, 'Damn, you got it.' They all said, 'You got it.' I swear to God. K Dot, Soul, Jay Rock was like, 'You got it.' I swear to God. I walked out the studio ... I fell in love ever since and it was over, bro."

A Black Hippy classic, "Zip That Chop That" finds the fantastic foursome mobbing around Los Angeles trading 8s. ScHoolboy looks about 15 years younger and 30 pounds lighter than he does now. "I'm cool and I'm calm, laid back, smoking a farm/ Socking the shit out of niggas 'til I'm breaking my arm."

Another Black Hippy classic. "Say Wassup" finds the fantastic foursome loitering in an abandoned construction site. There they find a fisheye camera with the tape rolling, and they proceed to document their idle shenanigans. "Say Wassup" is a great throwback to the high school days when you had nothing better to do but chill with the homies.

The first lines of Q's debut album Setbacks: "The flow, is in the pocket like wallets, I got the bounce like hydraulics/ I can't call it, I got the swerve like alco-FUCK THAT."

"Figg Get Da Money" finds Q rapping rapidly, on a rabid mission for cash. It jives surprisingly nicely with LordQuest's chilled out jazz vibraphone beat.

Setbacks finds Q in a variety of moods. "Kamikaze" is Q at his most aggressive. He spits and snarls and makes his dollar-fiending on "Figg Get Da Money" look like child's play by comparison. Great art is made by those who are ready to die.

Admittedly, the highlight of "What's the Word" is Jay Rock's verse. Maybe it's because he's rapping at the camera with his hands cuffed behind the back in the music video. But Q is himself detained in the back of a squad car, unrepentant as he recounts the events that landed him there.

Despite the ubiquity of the Three 6 Mafia/Migos flow, rappers tend to struggle with beats subdivided into triplets. (Jay Z's "My First Song" is one notable exception.) On "Birds & The Beez," ScHoolboy Q deftly navigates the swung beat laid forth by Dae One, ambling back and forth as if casually dodging all the shit thrown at him in the neighborhood of 51st and Hoover. He's an expert by now.