Q

With a powerful falsetto and a knack for tender, soulful storytelling, Q Marsden is well on his way to capturing the hearts and minds of a generation.

Q was five years old when he started recording music. Raised by musician parents, the 25-year-old singer-songwriter from Pembroke Pines, Florida fondly remembers laying his first track down in studios his father brought him to in Jamaica. Despite his early foundations in music, Q was never taught how to play the piano, guitar, and drums that grace his stirring, melodic songs. “I would listen to it and try to play it piece by piece,” Q explains about teaching himself to play the keys by ear and using classic Mozart as a guide. Soon enough he was programming beats into his mother’s Triton keyboard. In 2013, Q was inspired to make production part of his focus, and even sold a guitar he had bought in order to get the computer equipment he needed to strengthen his sound. His 2020 breakout song “Take Me Where Your Heart Is” which amassed over 200 million streams, was synced on hit shows On My Block, Gossip Girl and more.

“My music now has no resemblance to Forest Green or even Thoughts,” Q says about the evolution of his sound in his debut album SOUL,Present and the previously critically acclaimed self-produced & written project The Shave Experiment (seen in The New York Times, Complex, Hypebeast, Noisey, Teen Vogue, Billboard and more.) He’s in a different place now, and so naturally, the music is different. As he gears up to release even more music, Q wants to focus on his message: “Evolve, change and give hope, nothing more and nothing less,” he says.