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His independent sophomore effort demonstrated plenty of growth for one year’s time. Vices, demons, insecurities and hopes are all explored here, and are mostly handled exclusively by Rashad with minimal features, making for an even more impressive debut.Īb-Soul may be the “weirdo” of the Black Hippy crew, but he comes alive through his music. Rashad seamlessly blends harmonizing, rapping and melodies into a dreamy 14-track sequence. After continued studio time, the project morphed into an official EP (although even that can be debated given its LP length). Isaiah Rashad initially planned for Cilvia Demo to be exclusively verses, with each song averaging around 90 seconds. While the album was understandably a little raw and underdeveloped, it was clear that Ab-Soul had plenty of potential and a lot more to say. Songs like “Almost There” demonstrate Ab’s sacrifices and ambition to make it big in the game. While his debut was not meant to be a continuation of his Longterm mixtapes, it was still an all-encompassing idea of the themes presented in the previous two works. Q had a long way to go to improve his mic skills, but the material was already in place for a promising career.Īb-Soul said he wanted Longterm Mentality to capture his life and his aspirations in the music business. Given this, one would assume the album would more or less suck, but it’s quite impressive, especially considering all the aforementioned circumstances. From drugs to women, Schoolboy had plenty of distractions and rap was only a means to an end. In fact, he noted that the concept behind Setbacks was to talk about all the reasons why he can’t rap. Schoolboy Q will be the first to tell you he didn’t always dream of becoming a rapper.
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Kendrick may be running ahead of the pack, but that doesn’t mean the rest of the label is lagging behind. With Schoolboy Q’s Oxymoron finally arriving on iTunes (and those big brick and mortar things in the real world), we thought it would be appropriate to take a retrospective on the past releases of the label. However, there were plenty of quality releases to come out of Top Dawg’s house prior to October 2012 that deserve to be talked about, as well. While good kid, m.A.A.d city didn’t earn anything that night other than a sanctimonious text message, the cultural impact of the album helped catapult the whole Black Hippy and TDE squad into the limelight. They capped off 2012 with Kendrick Lamar’s prodigious release and rode the tidal wave of success all the way to a platinum album and even into this year’s Grammy’s. Top Dawg Entertainment had a banner year in 2013.