When he’s bunkered up in his musical laboratory cranking out hits like an auto assembly line for G.O.A.T Entertainment, HQ can pretty much do it all, except serve the food and wash the windows. Whether its hypnotic harmonies, needle-sharp verses or production work, HQ is an assassin in search of a victim.
“I’m that dude. Whatever you need, got it. If you need a hot verse, come to me. You need a hook, come to me. If you need beats,” says the Tyler, Texas, word master. “The album is basically showing off – the vocal skills, the rap skills, the production skills. Everything. I’m that dude you need to mess with.”
Basically, HQ has a custom-made entertainment machine lodged between his ears. Music seems to come out of his pores in beads of ripping rhymes and club-banging beats. Peep out “Legs in a V,” and you’ll see what we’re talking about. “And the CD I’m with that Iz is the byproduct of him reaching inside the musical vault stored in his mind and pouring his multifaceted skill set on wax.
I’m With that Iz is a compilation of real-time experiences of a lyrical hustler on an uninterrupted upward trajectory.
“I’m kind of like one of those you don’t know which way I’m going to come. I sing, and I rap.” And that keeps his burgeoning fan base not only entertained, but on their toes as well. They don’t know what he’s gonna hit them with next.
Howard Quincy was a lowercase “h” when he began juggling words with the ease of someone tying their shoe or changing the remote.
“I started rapping to songs and, eventually, I began plugging my own words. My mom bought me a karaoke machine in the 8th grade,” he said.
Why did she do that? The game tilted on its axis when that happened.
Today, HQ can rip off rhymes quicker than machine-gun projectiles, but still pour some hot, intoxicating melodies over it to make the tracks hypnotic and unforgettable like he did with “Yo Kick it.”
HQ tells how he really channeled his inner crooner. “We had a group in high school. And we couldn’t find someone, like a girl, to sing the hook,” he explains. “So, I started playing on the hook. And people said, ‘Who is that on the hook?’ and they said, ‘He can sang!’ I can rap, but I put melody on the vocals.”
Much like his musical idols Bone Thugs N Harmony. And we all witnessed just how high they rocketed. Therefore, in a barren landscape as the game is being described by critics and fans, spotting a young G like HQ in the cut won’t be hard at all.
Watch HQ’s smoke via facebook/hqmusic, youtube.com/mrhq1 or twitter/hqmusic.
–terry shropshire
