Schoolboy Q released some tantalizing information on his upcoming album, which has been announced to drop on July 8th—less than a month’s wait to see what the wild card of Top Dawg Entertainment has to offer. He certainly snatched the public’s attention with his new album cover: a smeared likeness of the famous meme Crying Jordan and the scrawled on title of Blank Face LP.
The album cover is fitting, unexpected, and hilarious, without a doubt. But, it also raises questions about both the meaning behind it, and any illusions it may offer for the content of the songs which will make up the artist’s fourth album. Not to mention the pressure it adds, as Schoolboy just grasped the Internet’s most beloved meme, and must now live up to the expectations it attaches to the album.
The hype the altered photo has caused will probably supersede that of the actual album’s dropping. According to Twitter, people still aren’t sure if the idea is a work of genius or a work of capitalistic trolling. Schoolboy has taken something that belonged to the people and made it his own. Nobody seems to mind though—Michael Jordan probably not included—as Schoolboy Q has taken a worldwide joke and made it a form of bona fide art. What he succeeded to do was totally befitting of the eccentric rapper’s M.O.—shock value and comical aptitude blended into one.
It is certainly interesting to see what people are capable of immortalizing. Who would think that a picture taken of a weeping NBA Hall of Fame inductee would become the face of the millennial generation’s sadness. Who knew that it would be altered, dramatized, and plastered on the front of an album of a highly popular musician for the whole world, and the future world, to see. Will it be treasured by the generations to come? Or will it merely be remembered as the random whimsy of a ludicrous bucket hat wearing rapper?
-Caira Wynn Blackwell