There's no denying that Top Dawg has come up. With ScHoolboy Q's highly anticipated Oxymoron album about to take over the Billboard 200 and debut at #1, and with Kendrick Lamar's good kid, m.A.A.d city still doing numbers on the charts, both rappers have been tapped by Billboard to cover their upcoming issue.
The cover reads the "The Tale Of Top Dawg" with both K. Dot and Q sitting on a couch, Q repping a TDE sweater and Kendrick rocking Red Octobers. Peep the cover in the gallery above.
Read our review of Oxymoron in conjunction with The Needle Drop here and let us know what you think.
[UPDATE: Kendrick Lamar To Drop New LP In September, Black Hippy Possibly Releasing Album Too]
As we reported earlier today, Kendrick Lamar and ScHoolboy Q have locked down Billboard's latest issue with both MCs appearing on the cover. Now the full cover story has been released on Billboard, and as the headline indicates, it's more about the entire Top Dawg story than any one MC signed to TDE.
The cover story comes with some interesting bits of information, the most important of which is the fact that Kendrick Lamar is preparing a new album for this coming September. K. Dot and TDE have kept any details about a new LP tightly under wraps, and this is the first actual piece of confirmation we've received from the camp.
Through out the interview with Anthony "Top Dawg" Tiffith, Dave Free, Kendrick and Q discuss their respective come-ups, as well as those of Jay Rock, SZA and Isaiah Rashad, while Tiffith details his business acumen. One such example: "I had a little trick to make sure we hit No. 1 on iTunes," Tiffith says. "All records come out on Tuesday then peak after the first few days. When they were on the way down on Friday, that's when I'd drop TDE's shit - and we'd zoom right to the top. Even if we got to the top of the charts by selling 200 copies, we still had the perception of being No. 1, and people paid attention."
Near the end of the story is when we receive the gems: Billboard states that Free (TDE's co-president) thinks that the long-anticipated Black Hippy album may arrive this year, while Tiffith indicates that Kendrick Lamar has a new album coming in September. Read the excerpt below.
Meanwhile, Free thinks the long-awaited debut from Black Hippy - the supergroup featuring Lamar, Q, Rock and Ab-Soul - is likely to appear in 2014; Tiffith indicates that TDE is planning to release a new Lamar album this coming September, too.
Who's excited?