Hangout: On the Dot

Abuzz with Grammy hype, Tacoma’s unknown star makes it clear that he isn’t going anywhere.

It’s hard to get a beat on Quincy Henry. He doesn’t like the term “rapper,” or “producer,” or even “artist.” Those words are too restrictive. The man they call Q Dot settles instead for “hip hop musician.” Rapping, producing, singing, he has done it all for himself on his first two albums. What little he couldn’t do, he handed over to the man beside him at Cutter’s Point on a recent Friday, sipping chai: manager, business partner and longtime friend Maurice Thornton.

Photo by Todd Hamm

This coffee shop on busy Pacific Avenue in downtown Tacoma is the duo’s favorite hangout. “There’s an energy here I can’t quite put my finger on,” says Henry while sipping on a blueberry tea. “I love it.” In a crisp burgundy sweater pulled over a vibrant gold and grey shirt-and-tie combo, the twenty-six-year-old Q Dot looks like Kanye West circa College Dropout, while Thornton is all business, plus a flashy pair of diamond earrings. The coffee shop rests below a tall brick apartment complex that overlooks the Thea Foss Inlet of Commencement Bay. It was in his fourth-floor apartment here that Henry wrote and recorded the better part of the most recent Q Dot album, Underground Railroad, which got a lot of attention after making the initial ballot for this year’s Grammy Awards.

“I signed up for everything I was eligible for, even Best Liner Notes,” Henry says, laughing at his own eagerness, then rattling off a long list of other categories he checked off. He says he was amazed to find himself on the ballot in seven different categories — although Best Liner Notes was not one of them.

Although Q Dot’s selection came as a surprise to many in the area’s hip hop community, it only reaffirms the notion that Henry’s sparse, danceable instrumentals appeal more to a mainstream audience than to the decidedly grittier tastes of the local indie rap crowd. Admittedly something of an outsider looking in on the bustling Seattle scene, the Tacoma native says he’s content to “stay home and carry the flag” — to bring the mainstream sound to the Northwest rather than the other way around.

Henry is no stranger to such brushes with commercial success. He has been on the radar of the major labels, he says, since he came a plane ticket away from signing a record contract with Interscope a few years back. Plans were derailed when the representative he was dealing with left the label the week before the two were scheduled to meet in California. Not easily deterred, Henry took the news as a sign that he was supposed to go the independent route, and he began to push his own product. Now, with a small distribution offer from Universal, and the Grammys’ encouragement, opportunities seem to be opening up on a national level, if not locally.

Outside the coffee shop, Henry savors the last of his tea, joking that he will name his next album Blueberry in tribute. A few minutes later, we’re listening to some of his new tracks as the two point out some of their favorite haunts from the seats of Thornton’s “Marks Mobile.” The car is a glossy black BMW 330x with a large white decal for the duo’s record label, Tre’dmarks Music Group, slapped in the middle of the tinted back window. “In this album, you really get to the core of Q,” says Thornton as he makes a turn. Looking out the window, Henry says he has plans for Tacoma.

Henry talks about the history he can feel in these streets, and his hopes to revitalize some of the barer elements of the neighborhood. “You got all of this arts and music and young energy mixed in with all of this old energy that’s already here,” he says. “It’s gonna be big. It might take a while, but it’ll be big out here.”

As the two drop me off at my car near the coffee shop, Henry hands me a copy of Underground Railroad with the self-assured look of someone who’s on the verge of accomplishing big things, insisting it’s his best work to date. Turning the CD over in my hand, I nod and say thanks. Then I tell him to work on his liner notes.