This sizzling new set (due in stores May 2, 2000) takes his impressive skills as a multi-talented groundbreaking music man to a new level. As he did on his first album, T.Q. takes on the realities of everyday life ("Daily," "Ghetto" and "The Grind"), love ("The One") and relationships ("How Could I Be Down," "Superbitches" and "Best Friend"). And once again, he uses the same basic approach, keeping the music real from start to finish.

"I'm going to be myself regardless of what people say or think," TQ avers. "If I have to conform... well, that's not going to happen. I'm not going to be a different person in the studio than I am in the streets. So when you hear my album, you're hearing me dealing with my life right here, right now.

"It may be a different time period from when I did my first album but now, just like everyone else, I have a whole new set of issues and challenges to deal with..."

TQ co-produced several songs on his new album with producers Living Proof, Warren G., and Damizza. He also wrote every song on the record including the premier single, "Daily," which is also a dynamic new video directed by Darren Grant (whose screen credits include hits videos by Monica and Destiny's Child). This sophomore 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 Iyrics reflect his streetwise smarts.

"When the first album came out in 1998, it was all about situations I had been dealing with in the past," he explains. "I had a lot of anger bottled up. Once I got that off my chest, I was able to spread my wings. I started creating music that was more about my life now."

TQ's nearly two years of world travel profoundly altered his perceptions of himself and his career. The song "Internationally Yours" was written in response to the powerful reaction his music created when They Never Saw Me Coming was released globally in early '99. The response to such key tracks on the debut album as "Westside," "Bye Bye Baby," and "Better Days" was beyond anything the Alabama-born, L.A.-bred singer/songwriter and producer had experienced before.

"The reaction I got from my first album showed me that my music was touching people," says TQ. "It was amazing to me to hear people singing along with 'Westside' at a festival in Germany where there were 8,000 people—and two million more watching on TV—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 U.S. are the same things people are dealing with everywhere."

Closer to home, TQ tackles more real life themes on THE II COMING with "How Could 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..."

And although its title is certain to provoke controversy, the singer insists that "Superbitches" is "pro-women."

"It's about a woman who stands up for her man, so it's not a putdown.It's not what people think it's about when they see the name of the song. . .But the video--well, that's a different story!" TQ grins playfully.

"Daily," the first single from THE II 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..."

TQ used much the same approach for They Never Saw Me Coming, a panoramic slice of urban life. The hit single "Westside" was his Iyrical tribute to rap icons like Eazy-E and Tupac Shakur, giving props to the rappers who influenced his own music. "It reflected how I felt about brothers like Eazy, Tupac, Too Short and Ice Cube. They were all instrumental in giving a powerful global voice to Black kids who, without rap, might never have been heard."

Based on a true story, "Bye Bye Baby" 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," TQ says. "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."

The critical acclaim and international response to They Never Saw Me Coming was the culmination of a musical journey that began for Terrance Quaites in Mobile, Alabama and continued in Compton, California--the birthplace of N.W.A. and other rap legends. His interest in music manifested early on when he sang in church but his musical exposure widened as the first wave of hip-hop and rap became the soundtrack for his day-to-day life.

"My parents wouldn't let me play N.W.A.'s 'Fuck Tha Police' in the house, so I heard Motown, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Aretha, and Curtis Mayfield at home. . .and N.W.A. when I hit the streets," he recalls. "It was good because I got a balance--which is what makes my music the way it is today."

Working with producer Mike Mosley (whose credits include Tupac Shakur and E-40) on They Never Saw Me Coming, TQ demonstrated a commitment to honesty and authenticity which has carried over to THE II COMING. "Westside" became a certified gold single, and a Top 10 Pop and R&B hit in the U.S.

In Europe, the song took off like wildfire and became an immediate smash in the U.K., Germany and Holland. "Westside" stayed in the European Top 10 for weeks and also made the Top 10 in Australia. TQ made his first of many trips overseas in the fall of 1999, earning a warm reception from audiences everywhere.

"It's been amazing," he smiles. "I mean, a year after the record came out, MTV in Europe is still playing my videos. Just having people from different cultures respond to my music the way they have has been a real highlight in my career."

In addition to "being in the studio for past six months almost every day," TQ took time in 1999 to work on other projects. He wrote "Summertime," for the Arista debut of platinum UK act Another Level; and worked with LFO on two songs included on their platinum 1999 Arista album. Another of TQ's songs, "Baby Don't Make Me Wait," is included in the 2000 release of 'N Sync's new album; and TQ has also been writing for a new album by superstar Whitney Houston, expected in 2000.

In between sessions for THE II COMING, TQ has been building his own company, Headbeatin' Productions. His stable of recording acts includes a young female quintet, The GiGi's; a very young rapper, Pnut; rap duo Homies and three-member rap group The Vandalz, all of whom are featured on the new album.

With all that activity and the release of THE II COMING, TQ remains level-headed and clear about who he is and what he's about. "People listen to music for a lot of different reasons. Back in the day, you might hear Marvin Gaye's 'What's Going On' and it would do something to your soul. That's the feeling I would get when I listened to records like that, and that's the feeling I want people to have when they listen to my music.

"I just want them to get something out of my music, because I'm putting a whole lot into it." TQ is keeping it real with THE II COMING, the next evolution in his amazing musical odyssey.

The group that I was in was called Coming Of Age and that was basically one of those things where a record company has a vision for whatever kind of artist they want and they just plugged us in. It wasn't like it was a real group that we put together, it was just something that the record company made, and when it ain't real I feel that it shows right through - there's no way you can really hide it. Eventually, if it ain't real it's gonna come out and that's basically what happened to us. We struggled to have enough interest to perform every night. I hated the songs that were on our record. We didn't have any control over what we were singing we didn't have any control over how we were dressed. What I can say about it is that it taught me about a lot of the things I am dealing with now, so when 'Westside' came out with the success that it had it didn't blow my mind because I had been through promotions and tours before. I had been through the autograph signing and been through this and that, so I had a head start, and for that reason I am thankful that I was in the group.

Yeah, that went on for the longest. A lot of people don't know about my first album. I started putting concepts together for that record in '93 and it didn't come out until '98 - that was a whole five year battle with two different record companies. They felt that this kind of record was not gonna work. I had to go back and forth for five years with Atlantic Records. I had to go back and forth with Zoo/BMG about, 'Why do I have to have this boundary on me? Why can't I talk about what's really going on; about what I see every day? Is it because I can't rap? I'm sorry I can't rap! I'm a wack rapper. I wasn't supposed to be a rapper. I'm a singer. So why can't I tell the same stories? Why can't I see the same things as a guy across the street who raps? Maybe I wanna tell the same story? We saw it the same way, but I just tell it different.' People just couldn't understand it. Finally, we went on and did the record. We got the record done without having a deal. Mike Mosely was the producer I worked with the first time, alongside his partner Debbie Hammond. They found a creative way to get me off Atlantic. We just started over and did a whole new album. We ended up going to Sony and they basically said they had enough guts to put this out and 'We think it can work.' They were right - so slap, slap to the faces of the other two!

Yes it did, 'Westside' definitely changed my life. It's like I haven't slowed down yet - it's got me travelling. It just cooled down here not too long ago and now it's hitting in Asia and Down Under. It's like this little song don't ever wanna leave, but I'm happy about it. It's opened me up to a whole lot of different things in life that I never used to take notice of.

It did at first, but then when I started spending more time over here, and in other places, I started to realise that we didn't have no control over what part of the world we was put in. We are all the same and we're all going through the same things. Yeah, you might not have a terrible gun or gang situation here in the UK but there's something going on here that's your struggle, that you're trying to change within your community, and that's true wherever you go. Anywhere you go where there are minorities or lower class economic situations there, that's what it's gonna be. It'd like that in every place I've been, from Germany to Spain to Australia to the US to here - everywhere it's the same thing. So I feel that the way to communicate with each other is by dealing with real issues that real people wake up in the morning and deal with.

'Bye Bye Baby' did happen. It was a story about my best friend, who was about six or seven years older than me. He was a G in a gang in my neighbourhood. Him and his girlfriend were in the car one day and some guy stopped and car jacked them. I guess it had something to do with a drug deal gone bad previously between them and my boy. Instead of getting him, they felt like they wanted to get the closest thing to him. He was right there, if they wanted him they could have killed him. Instead they shoot her and kill her. Basically, he was a guy who didn't have a mother or a father - his father had got killed and his mother overdosed so he just felt like he was nobody. The only people he had on this earth were me and his girl. Once his girl was taken from him... I mean, I'm his lil' homie, but the feelings that he had for his girl were totally different. That is something that a man needs in his life, especially if he don't have a mother or any other base. When that happened to her, he just flipped his wig. When that base is not there, there are a lot of things you just don't think about. He just didn't care no more, so what ended up happening was this - he got the guys back, but not only did he get the guys back he got... the guy's girlfriend and a couple of other people in the house too. He just went berserk. It's a sad situation, it's sad that certain things had to happen to push him so far. I chose to write about it because the senseless murder of each other has been going on too long. We really need to take notice and think about how many young black men are born and how many of them end up dying before their time.

I definitely feel that the negative element are just as important because without the negative you will never know how good it is to have positive. This whole life we live is built on negative and positive - you get up one day and it's a bad day, you get up the next day and it's a good day. A good thing happens... something bad is sure to follow. That's the way it goes. I'm a person who chooses to deal with real life. That's the way it goes in my life so that's the way I write it. I don't really withhold anything; I give you the full story.

I can't say, I don't know. I don't know whether it is because 'Westside' was dedicated to him or it was the last time that people saw Othe doves' going up (the west coast 'W' sign Tupac made infamous)... I don't really know.

I don't compare myself to Pac. I feel that Pac was the greatest rapper to ever touch the earth and there will never be another. When people compare me, or put us together I take it as a complement because of what I just said, but sometimes I kinda wish they wouldn't. I wish they'd let Pac rest in peace. He left us with so much music, the least we could do is let the man rest in peace and give him his props.

Basically if you like the first one then you gonna love this one. The stories on the first album were told by an angry teenager. If you take the same story and come back a couple of years later you'll find that the teenager isn't so angry. A couple of things went right, but now he goes back to his neighbourhood and sees that a lot of the things that were wrong are still wrong, so let's tell the story again. That's basically what 'The Second Coming' is all about.

Man, it gets wilder and wilder everyday - it's crazy. I don't know, man. I pray that I don't get some crazy stalker - you never know. One time I was opening some fan mail and I was like, 'Woah! You're coming from left field with this right here!' I love it; it's all good. I can't think of a better job. I can't think of anything that I would rather be doing, so that lil' stuff ain't a really big sacrifice.

My mother. My mother plays a big part in keeping me motivated - not just in career but in my personal life too. I'm only 23-years-old, I know that there are people out there my age and younger than me who are dreaming about being in the position that I'm in. A lot of times you see the success coming, you see the money, you see that Othis' and Othat' is happening... people are 'loving you'. Your ego can get out of control - you never know. My mom is always right there just in case. If I move out of line a little bit she's there with the checking stick and it helps me. I'm going to always have her around and keep open contact with my mother as much as I possibly can. On top of that I got another tip from her, 'Surround yourself with the people that knew you before the fame'. Wherever I go I take my boys with me - some people may like it, some people may not like it, but that helps me stay myself. It's easy to get rapped up in fanmail and accolades, platinum plaques and all of that. You've just gotta keep your base with you.

(Smiles) Okay, okay. I got some fanmail from this girl who was a senior in high school, 12th grade. She wanted to have sex with me on the roof of her house while her parents were there. That was like the wildest thing that I ever got. I was like, I don't know what you were thinking about to make you come up with that scene right there - but that's kinda wild!' I'm not really trying to get in that position with mom and pop in the room

TQ's new album The Second Coming is out now on Epic Records