Oxymoron
| Schoolboy Q
Oxymoron
Oxymoron is the third studio album by American rapper Schoolboy Q. It was released on February 25, 2014, through Top Dawg Entertainment and distributed by Interscope Records. Oxymoron was his first album released under a major record label to music retailers, whereas his previous albums were released independently to digital retailers only. -Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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Pitchfork
His Interscope debut Oxymoron is essentially a volleyball match between his warring proclivities.
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Billboard
To say that ScHoolboy Q's major-label debut is "less consistent" than "good kid, m.A.A.d city" is something of a misnomer, because, while Lamar dazzles with precise storytelling, Q conjures attention with brusque physicality. Both MCs are aiming for different marks, and although Q's style is too unkempt to produce an album full of clean shots, his misses on "Oxymoron" are often just as compelling.
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HNHH
"Oxymoron", the third studio album by ScHoolboy Q, makes you want to blast it, driving around in your whip with the windows down, blunt in hand, chilling with the boys. It's the kind of album that you rarely get; the no-holds-barred rap where ScHoolboy goes wild on rhymes that come straight, unfiltered from his mind into the mic.
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Tiny Mixtapes
Schoolboy Q may have left gang life behind, but in some ways, the oxymoron lives on. He has traded in the bad deeds themselves for the act of reliving them in his lyrics.
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COS
The moral of Oxymoron, though, is that Q couldn’t have made a much better album being the rapper he is. It deserves the term “rap opera” more than most “rock operas” deserve theirs. It’s something special, just like it was always planned to be.
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Sputnik Music
Oxymoron is so heavily riddled with great tracks, its only major flaw is that it sometimes tries too hard to make hits.
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Spectrum Pulse
I did like this album and I'm giving it a 7/10, as this record is definitely worth your time, especially if you've a fan of west-coast gangsta rap. Schoolboy Q might not have made a classic with Oxymoron, but he did make a solid, frequently enjoyable, and often insightful record - check it out.
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XXL
ScHoolboy’s presence on Oxymoron is poised and confident. He’s not here to give us another hot single for the radio or win fans over with cocky lyrics. He's here to push gangsta rap mainstream without compromising his style. The LP is a sullen listen with hard-hitting anthems.
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DJ Booth
Oxymoron is amazing.
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Pretty Much Amazing
The height at which Oxymoron’s target is set is not very impressive, but the precision and showmanship with which it’s hit deserves commendation.
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Slant
Oxymoron feels a bit like a Scarface fan living in a Godfather world.
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Soulhead
Oxymoron’s irony and brilliance does not lie in the expectations of the album but instead of the authenticity dripping from the start.
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Lyfstyl
His production choices were good, his verses all at least utilitarian, at most head-noddingly impressive, and Oxymoron is an album that I will revisit several times over the coming months.
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Surviving The Golden Age
Q’s just out here crushing up pills with the butt of his phone, flipping over cars, getting druggy and fuzzy and weird. In the casual extremes of his abandon, he is thrilling.” Thrilling. Like artist, like album.
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The Guardian
not quite competition for Kendrick Lamar.
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Bearded Gentlemen Music
Oxymoron isn’t an inherently bad album, but I was also not, like, blown away by it. It falls prey to what could be viewed as a meddling by a major label to pull out all the stops, spend a lot of money, and make Schoolboy Q a star, but completely losing focus on the way there.
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No Ripcord
Oxymoron is definitely not the game changer many thought it might be, but it's yet another very good addition to the combined Black Hippy legacy. It’s an album more to enjoy than analyse, with Q’s elastic voice and verbal gymnastics a sheer pleasure to listen to over an excellent production that's widely varied.
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Dozens of Donuts
Oxymoron is a true street album, representing the struggle between family, specifically father and daughter, and the complications of living on the streets of Compton, surrounded by drugs and violence.
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Frontline
ScHoolBoy Q has delivered one of the best albums of this year. Of course, it is barely March and there is a future Kendrick Lamar album coming up soon in September. Regardless, ScHoolBoy Q delivered and will likely only get better. He definitely gave the fans what they wanted.
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Genius
Gangsta rap is a dying sub-genre, but as long as ScHoolboy Q’s around, he’ll do anything to post-pone it’s ill fate. And this album is a step in the right direction.
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Slate
That East-West thing might never be what it was, but Oxymoron is a reminder that what sounds like the world getting smaller is really the world getting a whole lot bigger.
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Rap Dose
Q’s release is the first this year that shows a detailed, nurtured, and well prepared product in which will be one of the year’s favorites.
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The Line Of Best Fit
For its occasional low ebbs, Oxymoron is an impressive display of bleak wit: ScHoolboy Q pits image against reality and myth against misery, trying to make a space for himself among the densely tangled contradictions of existence.
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Daily Chiefers
Overall I am really satisfied and impressed by Oxymoron, SchoolBoy Q laid out 15 great tracks and they were all up to par. It’s an album you can listen to from start to finish without skipping a track and to me there is nothing better than that.
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Dead End HipHop
AN ENGROSSING ALBUM DIPPED WITH HUES OF A BLOODY PAST, CRIPPLING DRUG USE, SLEAZY LIVING AND EASY DYING. IT TOOK ALL Q COULD MUSTER TO SPELL OUT THIS MOODY DOCTRINE, BUT THE CALIFORNIA-TDE RAPPER BOTH DELIVERED AND DISMANTLED.
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Koalition
Although comparisons will be made to Kendrick’s debut, the two projects are only comparable in that they both are classics that will grow on you.
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HipHop DX
Oxymoron isn’t quite an elite offering, but it meets the difficult task of attracting casual fans without straying too far from the formula that attracted ScHoolboy Q’s core audience.
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Nostalgic For The Present
If the last three tracks of the deluxe version were on the standard edition of the album then there is no doubt that Oxymoron would have gotten a higher rating. This is because, as shown with songs like ‘F*** LA’, it helps complete the narrative and it closes out the album the same way that it started: dark, raw and undeniably gangsta.
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The Silhouette
The overall message is muddled, and while still a great album to enjoy in individual pieces or songs, it simply cannot reach the level of more focused recent albums by other artists. This is not the complete album Schoolboy Q seems capable of.
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Vibe
Oxymoron is a song or two shy of flawless, but it’s another powerful statement from the TDE camp. Perfectly imperfect. How’s that for an oxymoron?
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Rap Reviews
This is gangster rap, but it doesn’t glorify what it means to be a G, it just tells it like it is. Did he achieve his personal goal of surpassing Kendrick though? The production is too inconsistent to get him there, but it’s certainly not due to a lack of intrinsic talent on his part. Keep your eyes on Q.
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What's Good
Personally Oxymoron has been on repeat since the album dropped. ‘Hell of A Night’ and ‘Man Of The Year’ are staple tracks for a night out as they turn up any situation. 'Q' is never going to be as conceptual as Kendrick Lamar but he has certainly stolen his limelight for now, and the new kid on the block is definitely killing it.
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Exclaim
Anticipation was already high upon hearing the quality of pre-released bangers "Man of the Year," Break the Bank" and "Collard Greens," but it's the album cuts that make Oxymoron — a double-entendre nod to the former Oxycontin dealer and current No. 1 dad's paradoxical lifestyle — an early favourite for Top 10 of 2014.
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The Skyline View
ScHoolboy Q revives gangster rap with “Oxymoron”.
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Entertainment
There is a great deal more to come from Top Dawg and Black Hippy and he'll probably ride a mighty high wave as a result of it, but I'll be surprised if it gets any better for Schoolboy Q's solo career than Oxymoron, and all considered, that's a damning verdict.
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The Irish Times
Beneath the gangsta rubric writ large , you’ll hear superb tales about the hard knocks and the never-ending street hustle.
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The Harvard Crimson
“Oxymoron” is certainly effective when it’s angry, but it’s least convincing when it wanders into the down-tempo and sad, which suggests a lot of room for range expansion and emotional growth for the artist.
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Rap & HipHop Amino
It’s a great album that I would recommend to any gangsta rap or Ice Cube fan and I don’t hate any song on this album, the production and aggression is great on the album and is probably the main reason why I like it so much, this album holds a special place in my heart for being the first rap album I’ve heard and the album that got me into rap.
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Sites at Penn State
While gangsta rap definitely isn’t for your everyday pop listener, anybody who enjoys real rap music will definitely enjoy this.
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Financial Times
Rapper’s album boasts an ecumenical range of styles, from the gothic East Coast menace to the dirty south bounce.
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Pop Matters
Unlike his previous efforts Oxymoron picks a brand of momentum and sticks to it, avoiding the peaks and surprises that have so often signified a ScHoolboy Q project. But once the songs open up, once the mind begins latching onto whatever phrases happen to stand out from track to track alongside the larger personal narrative and getting lost in the blunted haze.
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Treble
Schoolboy Q’s Oxymoron simultaneously praises and satirizes his Los Angeles rap ancestors, creating a labyrinth that’s never comfortable or consistent to be in but somehow always alluring.
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Mind Equals Blown
Oxymoron is a great Schoolboy Q album, but it’s far from a classic hip-hop album. Hopefully this competitiveness pushes his music forward even more this next time around, because Schoolboy Q absolutely has the talent to make a masterpiece, he just has to take what he knows and bring it to an even higher level.
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Define A Revolution
This was definitely not groundbreaking, but it’s a solid listen and a dope album for sure.
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NOW Magazine
But through varied production, Q strikes a balance between his hard persona and the party vibe found on Habits' catchiest tracks.
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Niles West News
From the perspective of trying to surpass Kendrick, I was a little disappointed but this project is still way better than what most artist are putting out today.
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Los Angeles Times
'Oxymoron' lives up to hip-hop buzz.
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Golden Plec
Maybe this was Schoolboy Q’s plan from the start – a lasting treat to his fans that held out on the worthwhile wait.
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ihiphop
Q’s road to recovery means he’s on the right path. Here’s to hoping the highs of this album carry over to his next attempt.
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Soul In Stereo
Don’t get me wrong, Oxymoron certainly isn’t a bad record. Q just tries too hard to fulfill his promise of a classic album and winds up overextending his reach. But when the ScHoolboy plays his lane, he’s on track to reach Kendrick’s throne someday.
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Clash Magazine
All killer, no filler from the LA rapper on album three.
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The Bradley Scout
The album ends with “Man of the Year”, an appropriate end for an album not only about Q’s success but about the struggle to find the right thing to do amongst all the bad surrounding him.
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The Silhouette
While the production and Schoolboy Q’s overall flow is good, the lyrics can be extremely spotty. This does not help the theme of the album as these lapses are unintentional, purposeless, and unfortunately feel like filler
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Action A GoGo
Oxymoron has too much west-coast gangsta in him from a bygone era of rap where such a style was highly accepted and strongly encouraged. With his flow and wordplay, I’m surprised he didn’t include Drake on his debut since they sound similar in style. While he’s definitely a hard-hitter, he didn’t make a home-run with his first shot, nor did I expect him to.
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Danielle Dorky
For Q, it’s not so much the story being told as it is the storytelling. And believe me, the ghetto never sounded so good.
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The Hoya
However, he has a created a decent album that not only maintains the caliber of Black Hippy, but also puts an end to comparisons.
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