Will Schoolboy Q Release A ‘Blue Lips’ Deluxe Album?

This past New Music Friday, Schoolboy Q released his first album in nearly five years, Blue Lips. The long-awaited follow-up to 2019’s Crash Talk, Blue Lips contained guest appearances from Ab-Soul, AZ Chike, Childish Major, Freddie Gibbs, Jozzy, Rico Nasty, and more. Prior to its release, Q dropped one single, “Yeern 101,” as well as teasers of several other tracks from the album, and although it’s still early, the album has already drawn major praise from critics and fans as a satisfying comeback for the South Central rapper.

It’s been so well-received so far, you may be wondering if there’s more new music on the horizon for the TDE star, particularly in the form of a deluxe re-release, which has become a standard for the music business as a whole.

Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it looks like Schoolboy isn’t a big fan of the format, so the answer is most likely a “no.” “Labels & artist kinda killed da deluxe,” he told a fan on Twitter. “it’s a scam.. no way I’m adding 3-4 songs to my album a week after it drop. I work 2 Hard on my craft for a extra 2k in sales. nobody cares.”

To be fair, the man’s got a point. During the big music industry slowdown during 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, it became common practice for artists — especially rappers — to follow-up new releases with “deluxe” editions adding a handful of new songs in the hopes of juicing streams. In some cases, a whole album’s worth of new tracks were added. While the strategy was seen as a useful middle ground to save resources from promoting EPs or mixtapes to keep artists’ buzz alive between albums, it’s rarely produced very many viable tracks or huge bumps in streaming numbers.

Perhaps Schoolboy’s decision to avoid chasing the trend will benefit him in the long run, giving fans time to actually anticipate his next release.