Better Ball

In the three years since his last album, rapper ScHoolboy Q has kept a low profile. He also did what a lot of guys do in their early 30s: He got really into golf. Now that he’s released his new LP, Crash Talk, we asked Q to hit the links

- Jeff Weiss

It can happen to any of us: The reckless hedonism of your 20s gives way to the wholegrain realities and sobering responsibilities of your 30s. And suddenly, if you’re the 32-year-old psychedelically groovy LA gangsta rapper ScHoolboy Q, you may find yourself under the spell of a more serene (if no less addictive and expensive) habit: golf.

“I had all these people telling me, ‘Why you playing a lame-ass sport? You a loser!’” the rapper born Quincy Hanley says, warping his box-cutter baritone into the high pitched mockery of an ignorant hater, “But like I tell everyone, ‘Bruh: Golf is life.’”

They love Q here. “Here” being the Calabasas Country Club, a postcard expanse of glimmering emerald turf, gently sloping mountains and a 21-acre lake, a few minutes’ drive from Q’s home in the same ritzy neighbourhood. “They” being everyone from the 19-year-old caddies who want photos to flex on Instagram to the baronial white haired titans of commerce who greet him by name, slap high fives and give him jovial biceps taps like he just closed a deal.

Unburdened from the demands of a nine-to-five existence, Q hits the links daily. His partner for nine holes in the afternoon is Adrian, a fit older Mexican-American man with wind-swept grey hair and black shades, who has become Q’s adoptive golfing padre.

The golf obsession started just over a year ago, and while Q seems a natural on the course, his new habit is actually the culmination of a fraught series of events. He spent his early years on 51st Street in LA’s South Central before enrolling at a local community college intending to play football.