Why Should We Like Any Of These Characters...?

Besides the fact that they are a bunch of losers who ditch school to play video games(way to plan for your future guys) and don't seek any kind of meaningful employment so they might build a future.

Bishop is a psychotic murder. That pretty much covers it. He's not really insane, he just doesn't care. He places no value on any human life and the only way he could make the world a better place is if he killed himself as soon as soon as the movie started.

Raheem is just another criminal who planned to rob an honest businessman rather than go to school, get a job or anything like that. On top of all that he gave a gun to a psycho like Bishop which led directly to his own murder, the shooting of a friend and the murder of an honest businessman. In a small way that he contributed to his own death is justice and would be a redeemable part of Raheem except he didn't plan it and it shows he was truly too stupid to live.

Steel is a brain dead fat ass who hangs out with scumbag criminals thinking they are actually his friends. They don't respect him in any way and break his families stuff and complain about the food he makes them. Yet he is still dumb enough to consider them his friends and does anything they tell him to do including robbing an honest businessman which leads to the store owners murder. The only good thing about Steel is he is so stupid that he manages to get himself shot which is a kind of justice, except for the fact that he lives.

Q is the one we are supposed to like. The reality is he is probably the worst one. Unlike the others he isn't insane or incredibly stupid, but because he can't stand on his own or think for himself he goes right along with the stupidity parade and engages in criminal activity that leads to the death of an innocent businessman, the murder of his friend Raheem and the shooting of Steel. He is smart, if not educated, and has a talent and a means to do something with that talent. That means of everyone he had opportunities that didn't exist for the rest of them. And he puts it all at risk, including his own life, because he can't tell his loser homeboys that he isn't a criminal and doesn't want to be involved.

Basically Q knows right from wrong and chooses wrong anyway. He also has a supportive girlfriend that could probably get him a decent job and help him build a future. Instead he gets involved in a hold up that leads to the death of an innocent man and hinges his entire future on a DJ contest which he blows because he can't be his own man. At the end he apparently "makes it" as DJ Red Alert talks about the hot new DJ and we are supposed to cheer his success. The reality is he is an accomplice in a murder and a robbery and rightfully belongs in jail.

I'd have had some respect for him if he told Raheem and Bishop to f off and never talk to them again and at a minimum focused on his DJ opportunities or at best went to school, got a job and worked on the DJ thing as a sideline until it became a sure thing. And if he was a true friend to Steel he would have told him he was a stupid fat ass and should stay the hell away from Raheem and Steel if he had any sense at all.

Sadly that didn't happen and all of them were scumbags.