n talking about Q and Ri, the Bay Area, and Sacramento-based hip hop duet known as H.I.S.(He Is Strong), you have to start with the birth of their son. He was born five weeks premature and had to endure an emergency C-section. If the doctor didn't catch the placenta ripping due to a bad reaction from induction sooner than she did, it's safe to say both the mother and baby would have not made it.
When the baby boy emerged from the womb, he came out completely purple with no signs of life for 5 minutes, the amount of time it took for the nurses to revive the child and rush him to the NICU. The doctors were speaking to Q and Ri about possible brain damage due to the excessive amount of time without oxygen. They (the medical staff) were extremely worried about the odds against the child making it out of the hospital and going home with his parents.
After, the longest month in their lives, all of his tests came back negative. There was zero brain damage, and the boy started improving rapidly “through the mercy of God” as the artists write on their Sound Cloud site. Their son became their hero, their angel sent from heaven. They began doing their music again in honor of him...because He Is Strong (H.I.S).
The young couple met in the Bay Area in 2006. Q started his songwriting journey as a teenager. He was a prolific writer of poetry who developed his musical talent as he moved beyond high school. Ri had started writing songs by age thirteen. She is an accomplished modern dance performer who spent several years traveling as a backup singer to several Gospel and Christian music artists including world-famous performer,
“Jesus loves me—this I know,
For the Bible tells me so;
Little ones to Him belong—
They are weak, but He is strong.”
Hot Box
Eleva8UP |
— Hymn 'Jesus Love Me' by William Batchelder Bradbury
I
ELEVA8UP / JUNE 2014
8