The iconic New York rappers that got ScHoolboy Q into hip hop
ScHoolboy Q was unexpectedly born in 1986, in the city of Wiesbaden, in what was West Germany at the time, but despite that quirk, resulting from the fact that both his parents were US military people, he grew up to be a quintessentially West Coast figure, a true LA rapper.
Q was a member of the Crips for a while, having gotten involved in gang activity at the young age of 12, dealing drugs as a kid, and he even endured a spell behind bars around the beginning of his rap career.
He was, in other words, a perfect figure to make it in the West Coast rap scene, following a similar path as so many of its past legends. Eazy-E, Snoop Dogg, and The Game had all been part of one gang or another, too.
But despite his strong LA rap credentials, ScHoolboy Q has admitted that his taste as a young hip hop fan wasn’t necessarily what might have been expected. While he loved lots of his West Coast elders, he was, at heart, an East Coast boy.
Speaking to Cypress Hill rapper B-Real on his YouTube channel in 2013, Q admitted to being “inspired by a lot of East Coast rappers” as a young person, including “Mobb Deep, Biggie, even 50 Cent”. Some of the best ever rappers, from his perspective, had emerged from his ostensible rival coast.
Q named Nas as his absolute favourite rapper, while he shouted out Jay-Z as perhaps being the best overall to ever do it. While he admitted that he didn’t personally like all of Jay’s work, the fact that he had been releasing quality music for so long probably meant he should be considered the greatest of all time.
Q explained that, even if you personally don’t like one of Jay’s albums, more often than not, “the people liked it”, meaning it touched a lot of fans. “The majority of the people liked it,” he said, “so that’s consistency”.
The reason he was so enamoured with New York rap as a kid was simply because that’s what he heard the most of. “It’s nothing against nobody from the [West] Coast,” he insisted, “I was just in the car as a kid coming up in the car with somebody who listened to East Coast music”.
He explained that it was his older cousin, who was a big East Coast fan, listening to artists like Nas, which rubbed off on the young ScHoolboy Q, introducing him to the world of hip hop that would come to define his life. His tastes later expanded, as happens when a person grows up, but, fundamentally, it began with that New York sound.