ScHoolboy Q is accustomed to abortive studio sessions, but following
Blank Face LP -- its grim sameness left him acutely unsatisfied -- he recorded and binned not one, not two, but three albums. Once
CrasH Talk was completed, he withheld it, unprepared to enter a promotional cycle that would involve questions about his late close friend
Mac Miller, and then delayed its release a little longer in response to the murder of
Nipsey Hussle. Dedications are made to both departed artists in the liners of
CrasH Talk, an album that isn't without moments as bleak and bleary as anything in
Q's back catalog. There's a whole lot of self-medication, loss of faith, denial, mistrust, and dejection. Resigned premonitions about the consequences of being caught in his daredevil lifestyle are laid out on the trudging "Tales" in a way as unsettling as any scenes with blood spill: "Probably miss my mom funeral, my daughter a ho, because the man of the house ain't the man no mo'." Over the slow, stretched-out funk of "CrasH," however, there's real-life turnaround with better results -- "Got my daughter that mansion, got my mother that million" -- punctuated by assertions of black pride and wisdom, if sharply of critical of the younger generation's strictly materialistic rappers. The block-prowling hard stuff, specifically "Numb Numb Juice," "5200," and "Die Wit Em" (the first two of six cuts co-written by
Kendrick Lamar), is sparingly and effectively dealt out across the album. No mere concessions to the portion of
Q's base that might clown him for picking up golf, they land each time with brute force. At 40 minutes, this is easily
Q's leanest LP. ~ Andy Kellman