Top Dawg Entertainment’s studio rules are giving us life

10:47 AM[protected-iframe id=”b7b8175e4a5ddf498733be4654b34a75-84028368-105107678″ info=”hash” class=”twitter-tweet”]

Top Dawg Entertainment, record-label home of Kendrick Lamar and ScHoolboy Q among others, is doing it big these days. King Kenny is obviously a major superstar right now, and Q is still holding it down. In an interview with Montreality, an extremely stoned ScHoolboy explains various things, from how he lost his virginity to the fact that a full Black Hippy group album will likely not happen. Overall, the video is funny.

But more importantly, the regulations posted for their studio are hilarious. Over the years, hip-hop and the music industry in general have legendary stories about over-the-top sessions, but these rules are fantastic. I’m here for random clips of the guidelines and quirks that rappers are dealing with while they handle their creative process. It’s far more interesting to me than, say, what they have on their concert riders.

It reminds me of my high school, where in the senior lounge, in the corner with the couch and the video games, we had to establish some order after the first week. There were two TVs and three game systems, so when you had a bunch of dumb kids in there trying to assert their gaming dominance, arguments of fairness frequently came up. So one day, I wrote the Unacceptable Excuses for the nearest wall. I can remember them to this day.

1. My controller’s messed up. There’s always going to be something kinda glitchy with a couple of the sticks in a shared space that’s not your house, so deal with it, pleighboi.
2. These aren’t my settings. Dudes would love to think they were slick when they lost and sneaked this stupid reasoning in. It applied in maybe 5 percent of all cases in terms of all the games being played overall.
3. I didn’t get my team/character. Basically, it was all fighting and sports games, so the characters and teams you got were clearly of major importance. But again, if you’re good, you’re good.
4. This isn’t my system. These days, at the highest level, this is a valid concern. For example, in the FIFA Interactive World Cup, the championship game is actually played in two halves split between Xbox and PlayStation. In the ’90s? Nah, fam.
5. You play like a punk. I specifically recall writing this rule so I didn’t tell on myself. Because it would infuriate me when some dolt found a glitch to exploit and ran it into the ground. It annoyed me, but I had to respect it.

Anyways, rap twitter: more studio rules snaps, less pictures of drugs and guns. Stay ugly, y’all.