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TQ… from Westside to Angela Jones
By : Mauzip

Back in 1998 out of nowhere there was a new artist from the ghetto of Compton… this was not a rapper, this was a singer that sang rap lyrics: TQ. TQ’s West Coast anthem Westside blew up all over the world and is now seen as a classic record.

 

"When I did Westside we was doing a song for a 2Pac tribute album. A lot of artists were getting together, new artists and established artists doing some of Pac songs over and just doing new tribute songs. So Westside was gonna be on that record." Well, at that point TQ was signed to Atlantic, but that tribute album was a Clockwork project. The album never got finished and Clockwork wanted to Westside out, but the problem was that they didn’t ‘own’ TQ. TQ got out of the deal with Atlantic cause they didn’t want him anymore. Not much later TQ signed to Sony (Clockwork) and TQ started working with Mike Mosley, the producer of Westside, on his first solo album They Never Saw Me Coming.

TQ wrote every word on They Never Saw Me Coming. The second single off the album was Bye Bye Baby. Bye Bye Baby was based on a true story. It was about a woman shot by a drive-by bullet meant for her man. "It wasn’t the kind of record you could put on for the first time and love it. You had to listen to the whole album. People told me that they would listen and they would use it as a kind of therapy to help them deal with something in their lives." Bye Bye Baby was maybe even a bigger hitsingle than Westside and from now on the whole world knew who TQ was.

On the album Bye Bye Baby is followed by The Comeback (feat. Daz & Kurupt), a soul-searing track detailing the violent revenge wreaked on the shooter what you can also see in the video to it. Darling Mary is a playful ode to urban life's blunted reality; When I Get Out, a pulsating ballad between TQ and Ericka Yancey, about an incarcerated brother’s insecurity when it comes to his lover on the outside. A horrifying drug-related incident from TQ’s past was the source of RememberMelinda; Gotta Make That Money is a contemporary hustlers’ theme song, featuring a guest rap by E-40 and another showstopping performance by TQ. "The bottom line is that this album is about my life, the lives of the people that are close to me, and those that influenced me."

"The reaction I got from my first album showed me that my music was touching people. It was amazing to me to hear people singing along with Westside at a festival in Germany where there were 8,000 people knowing that they had never been to the place I was writing about. That let me know that the song had a universal theme, that the same obstacles we deal with right here in the US are the same things people are dealing with everywhere."

About the follow-up of They Never Saw Me Coming, The Second Coming, TQ says: "I’m still dealing with life just like on the first album. But this album is based on a different time period. When They Never Saw Me Coming first came out it was about the past. Definitely about stuff where I dealt with a long time ago. This album is dealing with my life as it is right now. It’s a lot more refreshing as the last album. It’s gonna make you thing. But it’s not necessarily gonna make you sad. I don’t wanna call it a happy album. Because it’s definitely based on the reality. And I will focus on the struggle like I did on the first album. But I’m looking at it through happy eyes."

On The Second Coming TQ took on the realities of everyday life (Daily, G.H.E.T.T.O. and The Grind), love (The One) and relationships (How Can I Be Down, Superbitches and Best Friend). TQ co-produced several songs on The Second Coming with producers Living Proof, Warren G., and Damizza. He also wrote every song on the record including the single, Daily, which has also a dynamic new video directed by Darren Grant. This album showcases TQ’s soulful vocal style against a backdrop of pulsating, edgy, hip hop grooves. While TQ's sound may have an R&B flavor, the tracks and his lyrics reflect his streetwise smarts.

Closer to home, TQ tackles more real life themes on The Second Coming with How Can I Be Down which he says "is based on a situation I've dealt with. It’s about backstabbing, you know, like O’Jays 2000! It's still going on, every day..."


Daily, the first single from The Second Coming, was inspired by "a bad day I had. You know, one of those when everything is going wrong. Now you can laugh or cry when that happens… but me, I laughed about it. In all my songs, I try to look at situations and how I would deal with them..."

In a bid to affirm his ultimate belief in womankind TQ came up with Superbitches. Despite the title he insists on calling it a homage to black women. A rallying cry in fact for women who like to be in control. "I like to go against the grain. We’ve been dealing with these subjects for a while, women against hip hop… this bitch situation and it’s not cool. Would I call my mother a bitch? Of course not. So why am I going to call another black woman a bitch? With that in mind I decided to take the term and flip it around and call ‘em ‘Superbitches’. I did it because people will look at a label like that and make their judgement without even listening to the words. They’ll hear the song and they won’t listen to nothing about what the song is about because all they’ll do is the word ‘Superbitch’. Now ten or 20 plays down the line when they finally listen to the lyrics they’ll be ‘damn, I talked all this stuff about this guy and his record disrespecting women and he’s basically talking about the woman he wants to marry.

No, I’m not gonna say ‘listen superbitch I wanna marry you,’ but what I will say is I want my wife to be a superbitch. A superbitch is a woman that takes care of her man, her children, her home and herself. That’s my little definition of what a superbitch is. I gotta keep it real, there are things about ya’ll that we don’t have in our lives. We gotta have ya’ll. I wouldn’t cry in front of my boys but I will in front of my girl. As much as I don’t want to admit it, cause guys are always male bashing we need you."

Although the album was a great success in Europe, The Second Coming didn’t even get released in America. The Second Coming wasn’t even finished when it came out and some songs weren’t even supposed to be on the album. Ride On (feat. Lil Wayne) and Dirty a.k.a. Dirty Home (feat. Baby) were the bonus tracks to different singles of Daily. They were supposed to be on the record, but didn’t make it to the final cut because Sony messed up badly.

Both Baby and Lil Wayne are signed to Cash Money Records (Baby is even CEO). TQ hooked up with Cash Money because he wanted to leave this record company for obvious reasons: "Right after we put They Never Saw Me Coming out, I signed to Epic and we put that record out. Baby and Slim came to L.A. promoting Juvenile’s record, Ha. And at the time in L.A. me and him had the two hottest records out there. We was number one and number two on The Box, number one and number two at the Mix Show. Just the most played records at the time, so that was what I knew about Cash Money. They basically came and got on the radio and said: ‘We looking for TQ. Where’s TQ at?" I wasn’t listening, but people started hitting me up, paging me, like "Cash Money cats are looking for you! You need to go holla at them! The niggas got 30 million dollars!". So I went and met them that night at the hotel and it was just a real… They let me know how hot I was in New Orleans. Me and Juve was the two hottest records in New Orleans at the time too. I didn’t know that, I didn’t know my stuff was really stretching. You know the West was really what I was concentrating on. They told me that Juvenile had put them up on me and ever since they first heard the record they loved it. So we exchanged numbers and so we had a three-year long relationship before I even signed with them."

It was hard to get on another label for TQ though: "From the time when my record came out with Epic up until the time I signed with Cash Money it was like I was in the situation where I was trying to get out of there. It was obvious that that just wasn’t the home for me. I was still in the contract with Epic. And I think what happened was, the two people who signed me to Epic, one of them got fired and the other one’s deal didn’t go through after I got signed. So a whole new regime of people came up who wasn’t really into West Coast anyway and not really into my music as a whole and they wanted me to change what I was trying to do. At that point I looked at the deficiencies in the company as far as what I needed and Slim and Baby agreed. It took awhile to get out of Epic cause of the fact my record was doing so good overseas and he flat out told me. I was sitting there with the president of Epic, the music group and he told me flat out: "Look, I gotta be real with you. You’re making me money overseas, regardless of what it’s doing here. I’m not gonna let you go." I had to respect his gangsta, haha. I knew I had to set up a plan to get out, that took awhile: a year and a half, two years. Then I got with Cash Money in 2001. We knew when I signed that we had to start all over. Three years out of the game, a lot of people forget you. So we set up a 2 year plan and set me back up. I got in every video I could possibly be in, got on every record I could possibly be on and here we are."

Next year TQ’s album on Cash Money will drop, entitled Gemini. On Gemini, TQ, whose voice has also graced Lil Wayne’s summerhit of 2002 Way of Life, takes on the daunting task of being all things to all people: one part hip hop-inspired lyricist, one part smooth R&B crooner.

TQ didn’t have a hard time picking ‘Gemini’ as his album title: "I'm a Gemini to the heart. One thing that’s true about Geminis is we definitely have two sides. [Gemini is the] the antithesis of Never Saw Me Coming. When you listen to my old album and compare it to this one, you'll see that this is the other side. This is I guess the more civilized side but it still shows hints of the other one. I still definitely got that fiery, mad at the world attitude about a lot of things but not about everything. I just really wanted to show the difference, how broad my spectrum is. I feel that God has blessed me with a talent and the ability to relate to people on both sides of the fence and I just wanted to showcase that."

TQ also doesn’t wanna be called a rapper anymore because he is a singer. "I heard somebody call my music reality R&B and I feel like that's the closest description that I’ve heard to what it really is. I listen to rap constantly. I hang around rappers constantly. I live a rapper’s life except I sing. The fact that this is shown in my music is really genuine. It’s definitely not something I’m trying to do. That's just the way I am."

Since TQ was a teenager he always was a big fan of Prince. On Gemini TQ covers Prince’s classic song Adore: "[Adore is] one of my favorite Prince songs. When I was little I’d get up on the fireplace and do that song for everybody and they loved it so when Cash Money CEO Ronald Williams came with the idea to do a remake, it clicked right there. I’d been wanting to do it for awhile but nobody would go there with me. They didn’t feel I could pull it off I guess, or they couldn’t pull it off on the production side. That is my song. I sing it all the time, in the shower, I mean everywhere." Adore isn’t the only Prince related song on Gemini. The Damizza produced track Our Life (feat. Warren G) samples the song Pop Life.

The R. Kelly-produced pre-single (that probably won’t make it to the final cut), KeepItOnTheLow is a straight-up party jam while The Ghetto is a poignant socially-conscious gem whose hook plays on Dennis Edwards’ Don't Look Any Further. "The Ghetto is definitely special to me because I feel like it's a throwback to some old Curtis Mayfield or Marvin Gaye where you’re taking the approach of looking at the situation around you trying to come up with a solution instead of just putting it out there and glorifying it. That song is really talking about our problems and what little part we play to do something about them."

TQ reflects on his life on I Remember, a soulful midtempo song, co-written by and featuring his cousins Brandon and Brian Kasey of the popular group Jagged Edge that takes us on a journey to the singer's past.

TQ’s favorite track off the album is the last song on the album, Until: "It's really my statement to everybody: One thing you gotta know about me is I’m a hustler. I’m not gonna be broke, I’m not gonna be a slave and I’m gonna do what it takes to make that happen. I feel like we all got an opportunity to do something. I’ve seen people in worse situations than I am and get by, I’ve seen people in better situations than I am and fall by the wayside so there are no excuses. The song says `til the day I die, I’m gon’ live my life. I’m gon’ hustle and ball til the wheels fall off."

In October TQ toured through Europe where he performed his hitsingles like Bye Bye Baby, Westside and Better Days. TQ also did 2Pac’s West Coast Anthem California Love together with protege AtWill who will drop an album sometime 2004. TQ also performed songs like Ride On (which is a good song to get you in the mood), Our Life and the new single Angela Jones.

In between his concerts TQ also brought a visit to Berlin where he recorded three songs with Sarah Connor for her new album Key To My Soul. Recently they even shot the video for the second single Love Is Color Blind.

Like mentioned above, the new single off Gemini is called Angela Jones, which will drop in January. Angela Jones is "all about hustling". This is basically TQ’s version of Brenda’s Got A Baby (2Pac). "They say the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice and you know baby girl damn sure proved it true". It’s about a woman, called Angela Jones, who has the state of mind thinking the only way to make money is to sell her body and ends up in the prostitution.

TQ rounds out Gemini with the romantic All The Way Mine, For Life and Don’t Stop, making Gemini an across-the-board musical success story, fully-loaded with something for everyone from the pants-sagging hip hop head to the well-versed R&B fan.

Very content TQ remarks: "I think this time around, it’s a twofold thing. For the people who don’t know me from my first album, I really want them to realize that this is some real R&B. It’s real artistry and not no novelty type thing. This ain’t nothing less than real and I want them to know that. For the people that knew me already I want them to know that I can really sing. I’m not a rapper. I'm a singer."








For more info about TQ check out http://www.thugpoetry.com/ for the latest news and also visit the Thug Poetry TQ Message Board





 


 

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