Habits & Contradictions
| Schoolboy Q
Habits & Contradictions
Habits & Contradictions is the second studio album by American rapper Schoolboy Q. It was released on January 14, 2012, exclusively on iTunes, by Top Dawg Entertainment. The album features guest appearances from ASAP Rocky, Jhené Aiko, Dom Kennedy, Currensy, Ab-Soul, Kendrick Lamar and Jay Rock. The production was handled by American producers The Alchemist, Lex Luger, Mike Will Made It, Best Kept Secret and ASAP Ty Beats, as well as members of Top Dawg in-house production team Digi+Phonics. -Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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Pitchfork
His dark and moody second LP is a sumptuously produced and deeply enjoyable hour-plus slab of weed-clouded rap, but it's more than that.
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Sputnik Music
Habits and Contradictions reveals that Q can stand his own ground next to Kendrick Lamar and contemporary West Coast hip hop all together. This release is more than worth taking a listen because it will probably become a new favourite for the contemporary hip hop following.
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Rap Reviews
Q doesn’t have much of a theme on “Habits & Contradictions” except for the last word. You can never really get a sense of what Q is or what he wants to be: one minute he’s making “Oxy Music,” the next he’s talking about people being jealous on “My Hatin’ Joint,” the next he’s busy “Sexting” women over one of the weirder beats I’ve heard this year.
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Beats Per Minute
With each song, Q perfectly outlines his fascinations: drugs, fashion (at least in so much as it helps him get laid), money, bitches, and a nagging concern that he’d rather have a real woman in his life. Perhaps these aren’t particularly original concerns, but they are Schoolboy Q’s concerns.
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Pretty Much Amazing
although the album, by almost all measures, is put together with unexceptional parts, the resulting product is perhaps the hip hop album to beat in this young year. I could make a habit of listening to it.
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Genius
The album has 17 tracks (1 interlude), if it were cut down to 13 (+1 interlude), and one or two more of the song’s had a unique theme, this album would have been very meaty and very well rounded. But as it stands, this whole thing was a little boring and a disappointing to me.
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Nappyafro
Q has evolved into a rapper just as potent and poised as his Black Hippy brethren. While retaining his Habits, Q seems to have left all criticism as Contradictions.
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Reviler
Habits & Contradictions is already being talked about as a breakout record, its richness in detail while it zing-zags across various styles and flows politically incorrect at every turn is a celebration of dark joyfulness.
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HNHH
“HnC” is an impressive project any drug-lover will enjoy. You know it's a dope project when it fills three credentials: you don't need to skip over a track, the beats get you head-bobbing, and you wish you could spit the lines yourself. Schoolboy Q hit all three on the mark. Good ish!!
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All HipHop
This is not a Kendrick Lamar project, but it’s a damn good, refreshingly hard album that shouldn’t be overlooked.
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HipHop DX
Habits & Contradictions may be no follow-up to fellow Kendrick Lamar’s Section .80, but ScHoolboy Q definitively shines through as a formidable rapper with immense future potential.
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EarMilk
Habits & Contradictions is a real masterpiece, and if Setbacks didn't catch your attention last year, than I'm sure this album will. Big things to be expected from ScHoolboy Q-- last year Kendrick turned heads with Section.80, now it's his turn.
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Pop Matters
Habits & Contradictions is a total must-listen.
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Av Club
Habits & Contradictions doesn’t fully hold together as a great rap album, but it has some of the key hallmarks of one: big ideas, engrossing lyricism, and an unusual sense of exploration. It guides listeners down some dark alleys and toward some dead ends, but it never loses them.
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Exclaim
Habits & Contradictions is a cohesive and compelling exploration of a man torn between his past and his present. Get the album. (Top Dawg)
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XXL
Ultimately, lyrical dexterity and a versatile delivery prove to be ScHoolboy’s biggest assets. He’s got an arsenal of different flows, sounding at home no matter the sonic direction of the record. Such disparate influences might seem inharmonious, but, somehow, woven together, it flat out works throughout.
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FACT Magazine
Like Brown’s XXX, Habits & Contradictions is an album that strives to be as “out there” (and out of it) as possible. But many of its strongest tracks are those that see Q take his foot off the gas, playing to more traditional communicative strengths in hip-hop.
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Spectrum Culture
Workmanlike and endearingly earnest, rappers like Schoolboy Q are significantly enriching hip-hop today in a way that is uniquely exciting.
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Potholes in my Blog
His desire and confidence bleeds through each of the tracks and further defines his space on the TDE roster as NOT one of Kendrick’s under-studies. Yes it’s early, but Habits & Contradictions will be making noise to year’s end.
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Q. Narcisse
Q should be applauded for successfully balancing topics of self-awareness and occasional mayhem to create a cohesive album that should please both the loyal Black Hippy fanbase and new followers alike. Now, who said contradictions were bad?
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