Watch Schoolboy Q Weigh Freedom, Incarceration in New Video
Schoolboy Q dropped the third and final installment in a series of short films inspired by his new LP Blank Face, this time for the album cut “Black Thoughts.”
In the first two chapters, Q and his friends faced the consequences of robbing a pawn shop, and in the third act, the prosecution presents the rapper with a choice: Snitch on a friend and have his prison sentence reduced – meaning Q will be able to see his daughter grow up on the outside – or serve the full eight years.
With that conundrum in his mind, the dreamy “Black Thoughts” portion of the video kicks off, with Q straddling a hazy reality between freedom and incarceration. In his mansion closet, there are a dozen L.A. County prison jumpsuits, while in another shot, the rapper is smoking a joint in a luxurious chair just outside the prison walls.
In one stirring sequence, Q walks his daughter to the school bus stop, only there’s barbed wire along all the ledges of his mansion. When they get to the stop, it’s Q who boards a prison bus, leaving his daughter and her bright pink backpack to sorrowfully watch him drive off.
“Black Thoughts,” directed by Jack Begert and Dave Free of the Little Homies, follows videos for “By Any Means,” chapter one in the video trilogy, and “Tookie Knows II.” Unrelated to the short film, Blank Face has also yielded videos for the Kanye West-featuring “THat Part” and “Groovy Tony.”