Pitchfork Media, usually known simply as Pitchfork, is a Chicago-based daily Internet publication established in 1995 that is devoted to music criticism and commentary, music news, and artist interviews. Its focus is on underground and independent music, especially indie rock.^[1]

History[link]

Pitchfork was created in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1995 by Ryan Schreiber,^[2] then just out of high school. Influenced by local fanzines and college radio station KUOM, Schreiber, who had no previous writing experience, aimed to provide the Internet with a regularly updated resource for independent music. At first bearing the name Turntable, the site was originally updated monthly with interviews and reviews. In May 1996, the site moved to the domain PitchforkMedia.com, began publishing daily, and was renamed "Pitchfork", a reference to Tony Montana's tattoo in the 1983 film Scarface.^[3]

In early 1999, Schreiber uprooted Pitchfork from its Minneapolis base and relocated to Chicago, Illinois. By then, the site had expanded to four full-length album reviews daily, as well as sporadic interviews, features, and columns. It had also begun garnering a following for both its extensive coverage of underground music and its writing style, which was often unhindered by the conventions of print journalism. In October of that year, the site added a daily music news section. Early 2009 saw a complete renovation of the website's layout and a move to a new domain, Pitchfork.com. In June 2011, Mark Richardson was named the latest editor-in-chief of Pitchfork.^[4]

In 2008, the book The Pitchfork 500: Our Guide to the Greatest Songs from Punk to the Present–edited and compiled by the Pitchfork staff and freelance writers–was released.

Influence[link]

The Washington Post cited Pitchfork in having played a part in "breaking" artists such as Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, and Modest Mouse.^[5]

Conversely, Pitchfork has also been seen as being a negative influence on some indie artists. As suggested in a Washington Post article in April 2006, Pitchfork's reviews can have a significant influence on an album's popularity, especially if it had previously only been available to a limited audience or had been released on an independent record label. A dismissive 0.0 review of former Dismemberment Plan vocalist Travis Morrison's debut solo album Travistan led to a large sales drop and a virtual college radio blacklist. On the other hand, as one Washington Post reporter wrote, "an endorsement from Pitchfork – which dispenses its approval one-tenth of a point at a time, up to a maximum of 10 points – is very valuable, indeed."^[3]

Examples[link]

• Arcade Fire is among the bands most commonly cited to have benefited from a Pitchfork review. In a 2005 Chicago Tribune article, a Merge Records employee stated, "After the Pitchfork review, Funeral went out of print for about a week because we got so many orders for the record."^[6]
• Clap Your Hands Say Yeah member Lee Sargent has discussed the impact of Pitchfork's influence on their album, saying, "The thing about a publication like Pitchfork is that they can decide when that happens. You know what I mean? They can say, 'We're going to speed up the process and this is going to happen...now!' And it was a kick in the pants for us, because we lost control of everything."^[7]
• Wired magazine has attributed the success of indie rock band Broken Social Scene to editor-in-chief Ryan Schreiber's hype-generating review of the band. Frontman Kevin Drew said that, following the review, "Everyone was coming up to us, saying, 'We heard about you from Pitchfork.' It basically opened the door for us. It gave us an audience", and that the band "suddenly found [themselves] selling out venues."^[8]

Rating system[link]

Pitchfork's music reviews use two different rating systems:

• Album reviews are given a rating out of 10.0, specific to one decimal point.^[9] In addition, certain notable albums are rewarded with a label of "Best New Music" or "Best New Reissue".
• Individual track reviews were formerly ranked from 1 to 5 stars, but on January 15, 2007, the site introduced a new system called "Forkcast". In it, instead of assigning tracks a particular rating, reviewers labeled them: "New Music"; "Old Music"; "Video"; "Advanced Music"; "Rising"; "WTF"; their most favorably regarded songs, "On Repeat"; and for the least favored songs, "Delete". On March 12, 2009, Pitchfork switched back to an older system, rating songs in a range between 1 and 10 points.^{[citation needed]} Since that time, Pitchfork has stopped using a numbered rating system for individual songs and has introduced a feature known as "Best New Tracks" which consists of a selection of notable recent songs.^{[citation needed]}

Pitchfork.tv[link]

On April 7, 2008, Pitchfork Media launched Pitchfork.tv, a website displaying videos and original content related to independent music acts.^{[citation needed]} On March 12, 2009, Pitchfork.tv was incorporated into Pitchfork's new domain, Pitchfork.com.^{[citation needed]}

Music festivals[link]

Intonation Music Festival[link]

In 2005, Pitchfork curated the Intonation Music Festival, attracting approximately 15,000 attendees to Chicago's Union Park for a two-day bill featuring performances by 25 acts, including Broken Social Scene, The Decemberists, The Go! Team.^[10]

Pitchfork Music Festival[link]

On July 29 and 30, 2006, the publication premiered its own Pitchfork Music Festival in Union Park, Chicago. The event attracted over 18,000 attendees per day. More than 40 bands performed at the inaugural festival, including Spoon and Yo La Tengo, as well as a rare headlining set by reunited Tropicália band Os Mutantes.^[11]

The festival has been held every year since, and has featured artists such as Animal Collective, Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver, The National, The Hold Steady, !!!, Spoon, Ghostface Killah, Dinosaur Jr., Cat Power, Spiritualized, Mastodon, Yoko Ono, Stephen Malkmus, Vampire Weekend, De La Soul, Yo La Tengo, The New Pornographers, Of Montreal, Band of Horses, M. Ward, Iron and Wine, The Mountain Goats, Clipse, Girl Talk, Grizzly Bear, No Age, Ted Leo, Les Savy Fav, Devendra Banhart, Liars, and Deerhunter.^{[citation needed]}

The 2009 festival, which took place in July, featured Built to Spill, The Jesus Lizard, Yo La Tengo, and Tortoise performing setlists voted on by attendees, as well as performances by The Flaming Lips, The National, Grizzly Bear, M83, The Walkmen, Yeasayer, Blitzen Trapper, The Black Lips, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Matt and Kim, and Pharoahe Monch.^{[citation needed]}

All Tomorrow's Parties[link]

In 2007, the Pitchfork Music Festival was expanded to three days (Friday, July 13 – Sunday, July 15), with the first day being a collaboration between Pitchfork and the UK-based production company All Tomorrow's Parties as part of the latter's "Don't Look Back" concert series, in which artists performed the content of albums in their entirety. Performers that evening included Sonic Youth playing Daydream Nation, Slint playing Spiderland, and GZA/Genius playing Liquid Swords. The collaboration continued in 2008, with Public Enemy, Sebadoh, and Mission of Burma.^{[citation needed]}

Pitchfork also collaborated with All Tomorrow's Parties to co-curate the ATP vs Pitchfork festival in Camber Sands, UK.^{[citation needed]}

Criticisms[link]

Some critics have accused the site of rating albums from particular music scenes or artists more favorably in order to bolster its influence when the music becomes popular.^[12]

The majority of criticism, however, is aimed at the site's album reviewing style, with the site being accused of often placing the emphasis on the reviewer's own writing and personal biases over the actual music being reviewed.

Parodies[link]

• When Pitchfork asked comedian David Cross to compile a list of his favorite albums, he instead provided them with a list of "Albums to Listen to While Reading Overwrought Pitchfork Reviews". In it, he satirically piled over-the-top praise on fictional indie rock records, mocking Pitchfork Media's reviewing style.^[13]
• In 2005, Aziz Ansari and Rob Heubel hosted an episode of the NYC TV indie music show New York Noise while pretending to be Pitchfork's editors in chief
• In 2004, comedy website Something Awful created a parody of Pitchfork's front page. Entitled "RichDork Media", the page makes reference to nonexistent, obscure-sounding indie-rock bands in its reviews, news headlines and advertisements. The rating system measures music on its proximity to the band Radiohead.^[14] A similar, more light-hearted parody was created by Sub Pop.^[15]
• On September 10, 2007, the satirical newspaper The Onion published a story in which Pitchfork Media founder and editor Ryan Schreiber reviews music as a whole, giving it a 6.8 out of 10.^[16]
• In Jeffrey Lewis' suicide-themed song entitled "So What?", after describing a failed jump from a bridge, he jokingly sings, "A large garbage barge comes and drops twenty tons of toxic waste on my face/And as I sink from the sun to whatever’s to come/My last sight is the bums who all change their signs into twos, threes, and ones/And after this discourse there’s a 3.6, of course it must be Pitchfork."^[17]
• On August 12, 2009, the pop culture website PopSense satirically reviewed an entire day's worth of Pitchfork content in the style of a Pitchfork review.^[18][19][20]

Leaked music[link]

In August 2006, a directory on Pitchfork's servers containing over 300 albums was compromised. A person managed to discover and download the collection, which included The Decemberists' The Crane Wife and TV on the Radio's Return to Cookie Mountain, both of which had previously leaked to peer-to-peer networks. Allegedly, one of the albums on the server, Joanna Newsom's Ys, had not been available previously on file-sharing networks.^[21]

Deleted and changed reviews[link]

Pitchfork has been criticized for deleting older reviews from their archive in an effort to keep up with the changing trends in indie music. One such example is the 9.5/10 review written for Save Ferris' album It Means Everything.^[22] Similarly, the original review of Psyence Fiction by UNKLE received 9.8/10, but the review was later deleted and when the group released their next album 4 years later, the website gave it a score of 5.0/10 and described it as an improvement on their debut, calling Psyence Fiction 'one of the most anti-climactic and jaw-dropping disappointments of recent years' which 'came up short on little things like, oh, vitality, restraint, emotional resonance, and tunes.'^[23]

Negative reviews of two By Divine Right albums were also removed from Pitchfork after members Brendan Canning and Leslie Feist became successful with the band Broken Social Scene and their own solo work. Steven Byrd's deleted review of By Divine Right's Bless This Mess, on which Canning and Feist play bass and guitar, went so far as to compare the band to "retard(s) with a guitar" who "wouldn't know Rock and Roll if she broke into their house and beat up their children," rating the album 1.8 out of ten.^[24] After Belle & Sebastian's "comeback" in the mid-to-late 2000s, Pitchfork removed their 0.8-rated review of The Boy With the Arab Strap from the site.^[25][26] The reviewer lambasted the band for writing songs that were "so sticky they should be hanging from Ben Stiller's ear, and I don't mean that in a good way."^[27] Pitchfork originally gave the Flaming Lips album Zaireeka a scathing 0.0/10 in a review that also derided all Flaming Lips fans.^[28]

Interestingly, Pitchfork has also removed the 9.4/10 review for the album Things Fall Apart by The Roots, presumably because it specifically stated that Pitchfork "will not un-publish anything."^[29]

Misinformation[link]

Pitchfork has been criticized directly by artists for misrepresentation, most famously in 2007 by the artist M.I.A. for what one of their writers later described as "perpetuating the male-led ingenue myth" with regard to her work.^[30][31] Some have argued this is not isolated to Pitchfork in the music press, while this incident was later cited and similarly condemned by the artist Björk.^[32] Pitchfork's articles on M.I.A. and her career since the incident have been noticeably negative and have attracted media commentary;^[33] an article titled "M.I.A. Uses Pitchfork Tweets to Diss Pitchfork" was printed by LA Weekly in 2010.^[34]

Pitchfork Album and Song of the Year winners[link]

Pitchfork Album of the Year[link]

Year	Artist	Album	Nation	Source
1999	The Dismemberment Plan	Emergency & I	United States	[6]
2000	Radiohead	Kid A	England	[7]
2001	The Microphones	The Glow Pt. 2	United States	[8]
2002	Interpol	Turn on the Bright Lights	United States	[9]
2003	The Rapture	Echoes	United States	[10]
2004	Arcade Fire	Funeral	Canada	[11]
2005	Sufjan Stevens	Illinois	United States	[12]
2006	The Knife	Silent Shout	Sweden	[13]
2007	Panda Bear	Person Pitch	United States	[14]
2008	Fleet Foxes	Sun Giant/Fleet Foxes	United States	[15]
2009	Animal Collective	Merriweather Post Pavilion	United States	[16]
2010	Kanye West	My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy	United States	[17]
2011	Bon Iver	Bon Iver	United States	[18]

Pitchfork Song of the Year[link]

Year	Artist	Song	Nation	Source
2003	Outkast	"Hey Ya!"	United States	[19]
2004	Annie	"Heartbeat"	Norway	[20]
2005	Antony & The Johnsons	"Hope There's Someone"	England	[21]
2006	Justin Timberlake featuring T.I.	"My Love"	United States	[22]
2007	LCD Soundsystem	"All My Friends"	United States	[23]
2008	Hercules and Love Affair	"Blind"	United States	[24]
2009	Animal Collective	"My Girls"	United States	[25]
2010	Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti	"Round and Round"	United States	[26]
2011	M83	"Midnight City"	France	[27]

See also[link]

• Internet Underground Music Archive
• The Hype Machine

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website
• Pitchfork Media on Twitter
• Pitchfork Music Festival

Man Man
Background information
Origin	Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Genres	Experimental rock
Years active	2003–present
Labels	Ace Fu Records, ANTI-
Associated acts	Mister Heavenly
Website	manmanbandband.com
Members
Honus Honus (Ryan Kattner) Pow Pow (Christopher Powell) T. Moth (Jamey Robinson) Chang Wang (Billy Dufala) Jefferson

Man Man is an experimental band from Philadelphia. They are known for their bizarre live performances similar to those of The Mars Volta and Mr. Bungle.

They are known for their multi-instrumental style that centers on the piano playing of lead singer/lyricist Honus Honus accompanied by a wide variety of other instruments played by the rest of the band. On recordings, Honus usually plays piano but during the live shows he uses a Rhodes Piano or a Nord Electro 3. Other instruments played by the rest of the band include a clavinet, Moog Little Phatty, sousaphone, saxophone, trumpet, French horn, flute, bass clarinet, drum set, euphonium, Fender Jazz Bass, Danelectro baritone guitar, xylophone, marimba, melodica and various percussive instruments including pots and pans, toy noisemakers, Chinese funeral horns, spoons, smashing plates, fireworks, and—on occasion—audience members' heads.

History[link]

Man Man released their debut The Man in a Blue Turban with a Face in October 2004 on Ace Fu Records, but they did not begin to tour extensively until their follow-up album Six Demon Bag was released in 2006 to positive reviews. During 2007, the band opened for Modest Mouse on several U.S tours, gaining them further public attention. Not long afterward, Nike began airing a series of commercials starring Rainn Wilson with Man Man's "10 lb Mustache" as the background music.^[1] "10 lb Mustache", "Feathers", and "Engwish Bwudd" were featured in season 3, episode 8 of the TV show Weeds. The band also recorded a cover of "Little Boxes" for the title sequence of that episode.^[2]

Man Man released their third studio album Rabbit Habits on ANTI- in 2008, and embarked on a North American tour in March 2008, with Yeasayer and Tim Fite splitting dates. They performed at numerous festivals including Voodoo Experience, Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, All Tomorrow's Parties, Primavera Sound, and the Meredith Music Festival that same year.

Man Man released their fourth album Life Fantastic in May 2011 with producer Mike Mogis (of Bright Eyes and Monsters of Folk fame). The first song written for the album was "Steak Knives," which was inspired by a failed relationship and the death of a close friend. It took Kattner (Honus Honus) over a year to write.^[3]

Honus has made an album with Nicholas Thorburn of Islands and The Unicorns, and Joe Plummer of Modest Mouse and The Shins under the name, Mister Heavenly. Thorburn has suggested he and Honus are making a record in a new subgenre called "Doom Wop," consisting of slow, low-frequency music transposed with traditional doo wop harmonies.^[4]}}

Discography[link]

Studio albums[link]

• The Man in a Blue Turban with a Face (2004)
• Six Demon Bag (2006)
• Rabbit Habits #186 U.S. (2008)
• Life Fantastic #157 U.S. (2011)

EPs[link]

• Man Man EP (2004)
• Little Torments 7" (2008)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official Site
• Interview with Honus Honus, Ryan Kattner, The Inflatable Ferret 10/13/11
• Interview with RadioUTD
• Interview with Tiny Mix Tapes' Chris Ruen
• Interview with Pitchfork Media 05/22/06
• WHYME Podcast #49: Interview with Honus Honus of Man Man
• NPR Broadcast of the June 30, 2006 concert in Washington, DC
• Tiny Mix Tapes article on current tour.
• Set of 6 live videos at scheduletwo.com
• Honus Honus interview with Ted Coe on KCSB-FM's The Freak Power Ticket 08/30/10

Gene Ween
Gene Ween performing with Ween at The Edmonton Events Centre in Edmonton, Alberta on November 17, 2007.
Background information
Birth name	Aaron Freeman
Also known as	Gene Ween, Gener
Born	(1970-03-17) March 17, 1970 (age 42)
Genres	Alternative rock
Instruments	Vocals, guitar, mandolin, percussion
Associated acts	Ween Gene Ween Band
Notable instruments
Gibson Les Paul

Gene Ween (b. March 17, 1970) is the stage name of Aaron Freeman, American musician and a founding member of the experimental alternative rock group Ween.^[1] Freeman, along with childhood friend Dean Ween (Mickey Melchiondo), started the group in the mid-1980s. Freeman announced his departure from Ween in 2012, shortly after releasing Marvelous Clouds, his first solo album.

Career[link]

Freeman and Melchiondo met in an eighth grade typing class in 1984, in New Hope, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where they both grew up. Both of them talked about bands they liked and playing their own music. Soon, they hung out and began jamming, recording most of what they put together. Ween's music slowly progressed from a bedroom-style recording project, eventually signing to a major record label and transformed into a full live band. In May 2012, Freeman announced his departure from Ween.^[2]

Even before his departure from Ween, Freeman had maintained a solo career. He has performed solo concerts with artists such as Jon Anderson of Yes. Around 2008, Freeman launched the Gene Ween Band,^[3] where he plays alongside Ween bassist Dave Dreiwitz, and with guitarist Scott Metzger and drummer Joe Russo, among others. In 2012, he released Marvelous Clouds, his first solo album under the name Aaron Freeman. The album is composed entirely of cover versions of Rod McKuen songs.^[4]

Freeman has been public with his disdain of the jam band music scene, which Ween is associated with after playing several large festivals; in addition, Phish has often covered the Ween song "Roses Are Free" in concert since 1997. Freeman told Now magazine: "I like Trey [Anastasio] as a person, but as far as the music goes, all that jam band shit makes me want to puke. I’m just not that kind of dude, and I don’t think Mickey is either."^[5]

Personal life[link]

Aaron Freeman lives with his wife Leah Ben-Ari and their two children, a daughter born in 1998 and a son born in 2005, in Lambertville, New Jersey.^[6]

Substance abuse[link]

Freeman has acknowledged a history of drug use,^[1][5] but does not often divulge specifics.

In October 2004, Dean Ween explained via their official website that they had to cancel an upcoming tour in order to address a "problem within the band, that requires an immediate intervention, for the health, welfare, and safety of one of its members." Freeman admitted that leading up to that point in time, "it was pretty easy for me to get wasted a lot to deal with some things. I had a couple of really heavy years. It was drinking and benzos (valium), which is really nasty." Bizarre behavior by Freeman at a January 24, 2011 show in Vancouver has caused concern to re-emerge among the band's followers about Freeman's well-being.^[7]

Selected discography[link]

• Synthetic Socks (1987)
• GodWeenSatan: The Oneness (1990)
• The Pod (1991)
• Pure Guava (1992)
• Chocolate and Cheese (1994)
• 12 Golden Country Greats (1996)
• Z-Rock Hawaii (1997)
• The Mollusk (1997)
• White Pepper (2000)
• Quebec (2003)
• Shinola, Vol. 1 (2005)
• The Friends EP (2007)
• La Cucaracha (2007)
• Marvelous Clouds (2012)

References[link]

External links[link]

Nicolas Jaar is an American-Chilean musician. He is currently studying comparative literature at Brown University, Rhode Island. Jaar is also the owner and founder of his own record label and art house Clown & Sunset.

Biography[link]

Jaar was born in New York on January 10, 1990 to Alfredo Jaar and Evelyne Maynard and moved to his father’s native Chile when he was two. He and his family lived there for six years before moving back to New York.^[1] Jaar met Soul Keita and Nikita Quasim on a school trip through the Sonora desert in Mexico. The three bonded over music and began swapping beats and projects online. In 2009, Jaar started Clown & Sunset as a way to legitimize their music.

Jaar’s music^[2] is ruminative and emotional (he calls it “blue-wave”), drawing inspiration from fellow-Chilean Ricardo Villalobos and minimal techno. Most of Jaar’s compositions reside at 100 BPM or lower, far lower than the techno/house standards of 120-130 BPM. “I’m going to keep taking the beats even slower,” he says in an interview with Resident Advisor,^[1] “More unintentional things happen between the beats.” He released his debut album, Space Is Only Noise in January 2011 to critical acclaim, receiving a score of 8.4 “Best New Music” from Pitchfork^[3] and four stars from The Guardian.^[4] It was ranked #1 album of the year by Resident Advisor, Mixmag, Crack Mag, #2 by DJ Mag and #20 by Pitchfork. His track "Don't Break My Love" also received Best New Music by Pitchfork in late 2011. Jaar toured the album with a full band, combining sounds from his laptop with a guitarist, drummer, and saxophonist.

On May 18, 2012 Nicolas Jaar made his BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix debut.^[5]

Discography[link]

Studio albums[link]

EPs[link]

Remixes[link]

• Shlohmo - "Rained the Whole Time" (2012)^[7]
• Maceo Plex- "Gravy Train" (2011)
• When Saints Go Machine - "Fail Forever" (2011)
• Sneaky Sound System – "Big" (2011)
• Strech - "Why Did Ya Do It" (2011)
• The Bees - "Winter Rose" (2010)
• Azari & III – "Into The Night" (2010)
• Ellen Allien – "Flashy Flashy" (2010)
• Kasper Bjørke - "Heaven" (2010)
• Wendy Rene - "After Laughter Comes Tears" (2010)
• Matthew Dear – "You Put a Smell On Me" (2010)
• No Regular Play - "Owe Me" (2009)

References[link]

Quincy Matthew Hanley (born October 26, 1986),^[3] better known by his stage name ScHoolboy Q, is an American hip hop recording artist signed to Top Dawg Entertainment and Interscope Records. Hanley is a member of Black Hippy along with Jay Rock, Kendrick Lamar and Ab-Soul. In a 2011 interview when asked about what encouraged him to start rapping, Hanley explained that it was something he was "born to do": "I was just chillin’ man, but rapping’s just something I was born to do. I don’t know when I started rapping. I don’t know how I started rapping, but I know I wrote a verse and I was stuck ever since," he explained.^[4]

Preceded by two mixtapes, his first independent album Setbacks, reached #100 on the US Billboard 200 chart in 2011, selling close to 1,000 digital copies in the first week.^[5] On January 14, 2012, he released his second independent album Habits & Contradictions. The album debuted at #111 on the US Billboard 200, with first-week sales of 3,900 digital copies in the United States.^[6]

Biography[link]

1986-2009: Early life and career beginnings[link]

Hanley was born October 26, 1986, on a military base in Frankfurt, Germany. While there, his parents decided they were no longer staying together, therefore his mother chose a last name for him at random. That is why no one else in his family shares his surname. His father remained in the Army, but his mother took Hanley to Texas for a couple years, before going to California.^[1] He grew up in Los Angeles, California on 51st Street, neighboring Figueroa and Hoover Street. He claims to have been playing football since the age of six years old until he was 21. He played receiver, cornerback, and tailback, however in college he just played receiver and returner. After graduating Crenshaw High School, Hanley went on to attend Glendale Community College, Los Angeles City College, Southwest College and West Los Angeles College where he played football for the West Los Angeles Oilers: "I went to West L.A. college, I went to Southwest college, LACC, and Glendale. I didn’t really get the school like that. I would go to practice and go home. I wasn’t really paying attention in class. I was just in there making sure I did enough work so I could still be eligible. I wasn’t really trying to pass the class. I was just trying to be eligible to play football." As to how he came up with his stage name: "When I was in school, all the homies called me Schoolboy. I wore glasses and I had a 3.3 in high school, before fucking up my senior year gang-banging. My name’s Quincy, so I just stick to Schoolboy Q."^[7]

Growing up on Hoover Street he joined a street gang, the 52 Hoover Crips: "I was gang-banging at 12. I was a Hoover Crip. My homies were doing it and I wanted to do it. I can’t really explain that. I didn’t get into it with another hood or anything like that. I was just following the leader." Before turning to music Hanley became a drug dealer selling Oxycontin, and for a short time crack and marijuana: "I was selling Oxycontin. I sold crack a little bit, but I didn’t make a whole lot of money selling crack or weed or any of that. I made a lot of money selling Oxycontin. I used to go out of town and get it. You just sit back, your homie tell you about this person, and that person spread the word. And then they come to you. You don’t need to get that hype. So I was selling all types of shit. Got beat up, beat shit up."^[8] In 2007, he was arrested for a crime he won't disclose and says he was sent to jail for six months, half of which he finished on house arrest: "When I was 21 I got arrested and went to jail. I got a felony charge and they gave me a strike too. I don’t be putting out what my charge was but it wasn’t a sexual thing."^[1][8]

He claims to have written his first verse when he was 16, but wasn't serious about music until he was 21. Music became his way of expressing himself: "I wrote my first verse when I was 16. I wasn’t really rapping, but you know everybody wrote a verse before. I wrote the verse but I wasn’t really fucking with it. By 21, I started to really get into it and gained a passion for it. You got to let your aggression out, so you got to get in the booth and let it out. I was really working on my craft, studying music, and I became Q. I did all of it, school and the streets. I was just lost; I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was just trying to do something. Then I found music and it was just over after that. I made my first little bit of money doing music, after that I wanted to get used to doing it, and I kept rapping. Then it became something that I had to do."^[9]

In 2006 he began to work with Top Dawg Entertainment, recording at their studio "House of Pain" and collaborating with their artists. His first time at the studio he worked with his soon to be Black Hippy cohorts Jay Rock and Ab-Soul: "I walked in and the beat was playing. Ali told them that I rap. Punch told me to jump on the beat. It was a record that Jay Rock and Ab-Soul were writing to, so then I wrote it. Punch liked it and he told me to come back through. I kept coming back, kept getting better, and eventually they signed me to TDE." On July 29, 2008, Hanley released his first mixtape titled Schoolboy Turned Hustla. After the release of Schoolboy Turned Hustla, he signed a deal with Top Dawg Entertainment in 2009, where he formed Black Hippy with fellow label mates and frequent collaborators, Kendrick Lamar, Jay Rock and Ab-Soul.^[10][11]

In 2009 Hanley was involved in a short "beef" with fellow west-coast rapper 40 Glocc. Hanley released a diss track titled "Ezell (40 Glocc Killa)" where he questions 40 Glocc's gang-banging. Hanley has went on record as to why they were "beefing": "He made some false statements about my boy, Tyga, that's my little brother. He did a lot of fake stuff with Wayne, a lot of lies, rumors and childish shit that I really didn't like, and I really felt disrespected by this clown saying all this shit so I just had to like air it out". He went on to say "It's over with, I did what I did, I said what I said and I won't diss him no more, because it's obvious he ain't on my level...so why categorize myself with a loser?".^[12] He released Gangsta & Soul, his second mixtape on May 14, 2009, which included the diss track.

2010–present: Independent albums and Black Hippy[link]

Although Hanley did not release a project, 2010 had him touring, doing guest appearances and had him in the studio working with the rest of Black Hippy and on his then-upcoming project Setbacks. On January 11, 2011, exclusively through iTunes he released Setbacks, his first independent album under Top Dawg Entertainment to critical acclaim.^[13] The album reached number one-hundred on the Billboard 200 selling 787 units it's first week.^[14] Two weeks after the album's release Hanely took to Twitter and gave the album away for free.^[15] By the time Q's first album, SetBacks, was released in early 2011, he'd quit gangbanging altogether.^[16] Setbacks propelled Hanley into the spotlight and allowed him to earn a large internet following: "The concept behind Setbacks was [to talk about] all the shit that’s the reason why I can’t rap. The reason I can’t accomplish what I want to accomplish is because I’m doing all this dumb shit. I put it all together on the album. Like, ‘Druggys With Hoes,’ I’m out here drugging and I’m not even trying to fuck with hoes. ‘Kamikaze,’ I’m not even trying to rap—keep going broke. Different shit like that, I sum it up all in one album. My life did a whole 180 after that dropped. A lot of people still didn’t know the name though, but a lot of people did. It was weird. It just took me to the right spot. I made some fucking money off the project, it helped me see that I needed to do more positive shit in life, and it made me into the person I am now. All I do now is just chill. I’d rather just chill, work on my music, be with my two-year-old daughter, and smoke weed and shit."^[17]

Hanely headlined his first show on March 11, 2011, at the Key Club in West Hollywood, California.^[18] In March 2011 Hanley was arrested at the 2011 South by Southwest music festival and explained that he was ultimately jailed because of marijuana possession: "I got sent to jail for some weed. That was all bad. And I was the one that broke up the fight," said Schoolboy Q. "And then my manager Dave he thought he was Tupac Shakur, ‘Don’t touch my artist! Don’t touch my artist! Don’t touch my artist!’ I’m cool. I’m his artist. I’m like whatever. I’m straight then he kept going crazy. My ass went to the pen…Yea, I got away and then everybody walked out like Tupac in MGM. Police was like ‘Aww, there they go.’ Of course I’m the only one with all the weed."^[19]

On September 22, through his Twitter feed, Hanley announced the title of his second full length project to be Habits & Contradictions. He described the album as a "prequel to Setbacks".^[20] On September 26, 2011, he released the first offering off of Habits & Contradictions, a song titled "Druggys Wit Hoes Again" featuring Ab-Soul. On October 19, 2011, he leaked "There He Go", followed by "Oxy Music" on October 28. On October 31, he was featured on ASAP Rocky's critically acclaimed mixtape LiveLoveA$AP, on a song titled "Brand New Guy", which was well received by the public. To keep promoting Habits & Contradictions he released "My Hatin’ Joint" on November 15, 2011. On November 29, 2011, a music video for "To tha Beat (F'd Up)" from Setbacks was leaked,^[21][22] later that same day Hanley officially released a music for a track titled "Sacrilegious" for Habits & Contradictions.^[23] On January 2, 2012, Hanley released another song, "Blessed" featuring Kendrick Lamar and announced the album's release date to be January 14, 2012.^[24]

On January 6, 2012, via Twitter, Hanley announced guest appearances on the album would include ASAP Rocky, Currensy and Dom Kennedy.^[25][26][27] On January 6, Hanley also released a public service announcement for Habits & Contradictions, shot and edited by Dwayne LaFleur.^[28] Hanley sat down with freeOnSmash, for an interview and spoke on some of the tracks from his Habits & Contradictions, the interview was released on January 9, 2012. OnSmash claims "The 17 track project, due out January 14, is a look into Q’s life, with tales of pill selling, life struggle, partying, religious hypocrites, his block and everything in between."^[29] The album was released exclusively on iTunes, with only a few hard copies being sold and signed by Schoolboy Q in L.A.. In early hours of release, the album moved up to iTunes Top 10 Albums chart and stayed over within days after release. The album debuted at #111 on the US Billboard 200 chart, with first-week sales of 3,900 digital copies in the United States.^[6] With only two days at retail the Top Dawg Entertainment release scanned nearly 4,000 units to crack the Top 100, without any marketing or advertising.^[6] The album also debuted on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums at number twenty-five, Top Rap Albums at number sixteen, Top Independent Albums at number seventeen and at number three on the Top Heatseekers album chart respectively. Music videos for "Hands on the Wheel" with ASAP Rocky and "Nightmare on Figg St." were later released.

In March 2012, MTV announced that Top Dawg Entertainment, the independent record label Schoolboy Q is signed to, have closed a joint venture deal with Interscope Records and Aftermath Entertainment, marking the end of his career as an independent artist. Under the new deal, Black Hippy cohort, Kendrick Lamar's debut studio album, Good Kid in a Mad City will be jointly released via Top Dawg/Interscope/Aftermath while releases from the rest of Black Hippy (Ab-Soul, Jay Rock and ScHoolboy Q) will be distributed via Top Dawg/Interscope.^[2] On March 24, Schoolboy Q announced #TheGroovyTour; a month long tour with Ab-Soul accompanying him the entire way. The tour kicks off on April 20 at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco, California.^[30] On April 3, 2012, Interscope Records released "Hands on the Wheel" as a single via iTunes^[31] and began promoting the song at Urban and Rhythmic radio formats in North America.

Musical style[link]

Influences[link]

Schoolboy Q cites Nas, 50 Cent, Jay-Z, Mobb Deep, Kurupt, 2Pac, Biggie, Kanye West, Beanie Sigel and Wu-Tang Clan as rappers who influenced him: "But Biggie, Nas and 50 Cent [are my biggest influences]".^[32]

In several interviews Schoolboy Q has stated 50 Cent is the biggest reason he started to take rapping and his music career seriously, even going as far as saying 50 Cent probably saved his life: "We got the same shit going on. Everything he talk about is the same shit I did. I relate to Fifty… I can listen to 50 Cent and tell he really mean what he’s saying. He’s one of them niggas that got away with confidence. Fifty ain’t got the best bars, he ain’t got Jay-Z bars but his confidence on a record…you can’t deny it. I seen where he was doing an interview about Ja Rule during the beef shit, he was saying that any nigga that just getting out of jail that don’t know what to do with himself is getting into the rap game. Recently when I just got out of jail I didn’t know what to do I wasn’t going to try and finish playing football. That’s when I was fucking around with rapping, I wasn’t really rapping but when I heard that I was like fuck it…I really went hard at it. Fifty probably saved my life on some real shit."^[33]

Rapping technique[link]

In an interview with Complex magazine, he says he got his "rhyme-style" from Jay-Z: "I got [my rhyme style] from Jay-Z though. If you really listen to Jay-Z, he has a new sound every time he raps. It’s never the same. He might use a little swag, but it’s always like a different flow. So that’s all I try to do."^[32]

Schoolboy Q has been called very versatile with rapping as proven on his albums Setbacks and Habits & Contradictions. LA Weekly noted on Setbacks: "His style had begun to take shape, with his penchant for stretching vowels like Silly Putty or slurring a word and then snapping back into double time."^[16] As stated he never tries to stick with the same flow: "But at the same time, its just a feeling I can’t really explain. You got to be wiser to stay on the track, but there’s no rules. When you start rapping with rules, it’s when you start sounding boring. You may hear me fuck with my voice, you may hear me do a two-bar pause, you may hear me do an odd 33 bars instead of 30. Give you 14 bars instead of 16."^[32]

Discography[link]

Independent albums[link]

Mixtapes[link]

Promotional singles[link]

Guest appearances[link]

Music videos[link]

As main artist[link]

As featured artist[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Schoolboy Q on Myspace
• ScHoolboy Q at Allmusic