Drug addiction is one of the real-life topics listeners will find in just about all of ScHoolBoy Q's music. Q has never been shy to spit on his dependency issues, and shared even more about being both a dealer and an addict on NPR's Microphone Check this week.

During the extensive interview where he explained the origin of his stage name (it came from a pimp named ScHoolBoy in his neighborhood) and putting together his Oxymoron release, the drug subject came up more than once. 

“I was addicted for like two years and I would never tell nobody,” Q said. “Like none of my homies. I wouldn’t tell my girl. I wouldn’t [tell] my mother. Like nobody. TDE didn’t know. The only n---- that knew was Ab-Soul...Kendrick didn’t know. I was his hype man. I was faded. It was crazy.”

Back in the day, the "Collard Greens" rapper was making as much as $80 per pill selling Oxycontin to the likes of doctors and teachers in Seattle. It all started with one pill, Q said. "The dude was the devil that gave me that pill. I was the devil in Seattle when I was selling people those pills.

"Oxycontin was crazy," he added. "It's synthetic heroine…people would come through sniffing their mother's purse or something, or [trying to sell] a flat screen TV [for drugs]." 

Today, ScHoolBoy has left his drug dealing and gang banging days behind. He admits to smoking weed and sipping codeine, but music takes up much of his focus and works as a way for him to share the "real life s---." 

The candor of addiction and gang life is what sets him apart from Drake, Kanye West and even K-Dot, as he explained to NPR. "People mistake gangster music for no substance now, and all you have now is a bunch of soft records. Drake is one of my favorite artists, he's the main focus of hip hop right now. Kanye... it's  nothing aggressive about that, he one of my favorites also. Eminem even switched it up, then you have people like Kendrick, it's the good kid [m.a.a.d. city]. Even though his s--- was still on the gritty side but it was still 'good kid.' Nobody's coming from my perspective no more…making it an art anyway."

Q's major label debut, Oxymoron, dropped this past Tuesday (Feb. 25) and is on pace to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard albums chart. 

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