Reviewed Sunday June 8
The sold-out Enmore was filled to the brim with kids in bucket hats.
Isaiah Rashad, who recently signed to Top Dawg Entertainment and featured on labelmate SZA’s atmospheric debut album, was tasked with warming up the buzzing crowd, and he started off right jumping out to Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Backseat Freestyle’. His M.O. is more earnest than party, but with just one EP under his belt Rashad still had the crowd rapping along to ‘Menthol’ and ‘Heavenly Father’.
For his first headline tour in Australia, Schoolboy Q (or Quincy to his mama) actually kicked things off early, an occurrence rarer than a rap show without a weed reference, and was straight out of the gates with ‘Los Awesome’, and then launched into a very laidback rendition of ‘Hands On The Wheel’ from Habits & Contradictions for his early fans. The A$AP Rocky-featuring ‘Californication’ was a hometown holla, and then Q threw out his ‘Work (Remix)’ verse from A$AP Ferg’s track, which got the crowd even more frenzied.
For ‘Gangsta’, Q swapped the mini Pharrell hat he’d been wearing and joined his fans with a Charlotte Hornets bucket number. By the time he wrapped up with ‘Break The Bank’, ‘Man Of The Year’ and an encore of ‘Prescription/Oxymoron’, the barriers could barely contain the audience. One brave idiot even climbed a speaker stack and launched himself into the crowd, but sadly had underestimated the goodwill of the Black Hippy fans and landed face first on the carpet.
It was truly a ‘Hell Of A Night’, and Q was a contradiction himself, gracious and thankful – “Y’all paid for my daughter’s school, these watches, y’all paid for these teeth. My happiness is your happiness!” – versus, “Some girls come here with their boyfriend tonight… fuck that shit.” When the show wrapped up, his DJ addressed the crowd: “Get home safely, don’t drink and drive, but y’all can smoke and fly.” The crowd didn’t need much convincing.
