After scoring an R&B hit five years ago as a member of the group Coming of Age, R&B singer TQ has returned with one of the monster hip-hop singles of the year, "Westside."

The song's success was a long time in coming for TQ, whose unhappiness with Age's style of new jack swing caused him to leave the group for a solo career, and he eventually landed a deal with Atlantic Records.

TQ's album for Atlantic, which he spent some three years working on, was eventually rejected by the label. He subsequently bolted to Epic Records, where he started from scratch with producer Mike Mosley and recorded the tracks for his debut, "They Never Saw Me Coming."

On "Westside," TQ offers up props to many of his hop-hop forerunners, including Eazy-E, Tupac Shakur, Ice Cube and Ice-T, artists which TQ credits with inspiring him to believe that there was life beyond the ghetto.

"Before Eazy and before N.W.A. and all that," TQ said, "it seemed like, OK, 'superstar,' that's something you can dream about, but you can never touch it -- being a superstar. But when I could see some homies that I just saw a couple of days ago rolling by in low-riders and now I see them on a video, that shows me OK, I can actually do this."

"So I gave the props to Pac," he continued, "and the props to Eazy, because they made me feel like I could do it, so that's what I feel has me here right now." [28.8 RealVideo]

TQ was also able to get Tha Dogg Pound reunited for an appearance on "Bye Bye Baby," the second single from "They Never Saw Me Coming," which also includes guest spots from E-40, Ericka Yancey and Tray-Dee and is due in stores November 17.