IN-Q

What happens when you bring together a multi-platinum winning songwriter, a National Poetry Slam grand champion, and one of Oprah’s Super Soul 100 in one person? Meet IN-Q, the internationally revered spoken word artist who has shared the stage with people like Barack Obama, John Legend, Eminem, and The Red Hot Chili Peppers. He writes songs for Miley Cyrus, Aloe Blacc, and others, and he penned a poem for Cirque du Soleil and performed it live with the actors and dancers on-stage in Las Vegas. He takes the noise, the struggle, and the pain of modern life and crafts them into prose that has the power to turn you inside out and cut to the core of what is most important.

Raised by a single mother in Santa Monica, IN-Q’s search for himself in the 90s led him through hip hop, to songwriting, to his own unique form of poetry that is equal parts intellectual inquiry and a capella song, driven by a musical cadence. He calls poetry a church without religion. His performance videos, including “The Only Reason We’re Alive,” have gone viral. He has published a book of his poems, Inquire Within (HarperOne, 2020).