As Ted Cruz was fleeing Houston on Wednesday, the rapper and water company entrepreneur A.J. McQueen was out on the city’s frozen streets, delivering free bottles of his purified best to a desperate city.
“I want to help those in need,” he posted on Instagram. “DM me if you are out of water. I will try my best to get to you today. I’m gonna do this until I run out. Only for those that are IN NEED (Elderly, those with kids, sick, etc.)”
One immediate response read, “My mom has no water. We have a grandma with Párkinson, [sic] and my siblings.”
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Other businesses in the city were selling bottled water at grossly inflated prices. McQueen said he passed a gas station that was charging $40 for a case of 24 bottles. A Houston-area Best Buy was caught charging more than $42, though the parent company later apologized, saying the price was not authorized.
The state attorney general’s office said water was foremost in reports of gouging streaming in from the public. A list of alleged violators also includes gas stations and hotels.
The law provides for fines up to $250,000.
McQueen was the opposite of a gouger, filling his Jeep with cases of water and traveling the treacherously icy streets to people who, in his words, are “those without—those who don’t really have the funds.”
He lived up to a nickname he acquired after he began rapping about water —with songs like “Distilled,” “Alkaline” and “Girls Love Water”—and founded the Hydrate Hill Water Company in 2020.
“They call me The Water Boy,” the 31-year-old rapper said.
He added, “I’m doing everything I can. A lot of people are in a bad way now. I can’t just sit back.”
McQueen boarded an elevator in one building that had electricity on, only for the power to go off moments later. He was stuck between floors in frigid darkness as Cruz was luxuriating in 80-degree weather in Cancun.
“I sat there,” McQueen recalled. ”I believe in keeping a cool head.”
He said he is “partly claustrophobic,” but fortunately the power came back on 45 minutes later—just long enough for him to escape. Then he kept to the stairs, simply lugging cases up to whatever floor a recipient lived on.
“Water Boy still out here,” he posted on Instagram. “The elevator is down but Im still not stopping. I see y’all dms and messages and I’m trying my best to get to you.
He witnessed again and again the emotional impact a simple act of kindness can have.
“There’s a lot of people that cry,” he said. “A lot of people just want somebody to reach out for them.”
Those in tears included the mother in a family of six so desperate they had begun drinking out of a swimming pool, he said.
“The mom kept saying, ‘Thank you,’” McQueen recalled. “She said it more than 30 times. Her daughter proceeded to Instagram message me, ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you.’”
McQueen went from 9 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. on Wednesday and started at the same time on Thursday, finally knocking off at 11 p.m.
He figured he distributed a total of 3,000 bottles.
By Friday, much of the city had power, but there were still millions of residents without usable water because of either burst pipes or contamination from treatment plants that had been knocked offline. McQueen embarked on another day that promised to extend to 14 hours or more. He brought five-gallon containers as well as bottles.
“So people can bathe with it, so they can put it in their commodes,” he said.
McQueen is already a well-known figure in Houston. He originally hailed from Missouri, and a brief involvement with gangs ended at 15, when he was shot and seriously wounded, he said.
He survived to become a rapper who focused on positive messages. He received a White House Service Achievement Award from President Obama in 2013 and was also given a Certificate of Congressional Recognition by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) that same year. Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner declared July 13 to be A.J. McQueen Day in 2019.
He has also been active in the racial-justice movement, joining protest marches following the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Trayvon Martin in Florida, and George Floyd in Minneapolis.
But McQueen is also the nephew of retired St. Louis police Capt. David Dorn, who was shot to death by looters in the wake of Floyd’s death. He posted about it on Instagram the day he joined 60,000 at a protest in Floyd’s home city of Houston.
“Today while grieving the death of my Uncle I marched in solidarity for George Floyd in Houston. In my darkest moments all I tell myself is ‘I gotta keep moving.’ I don’t know if that’s healthy or not but it’s all I know. IDK how to stop, I feel like I’ll go crazy or something if I do. So I keep going… hoping that somehow my heart will heal if I try to be there for others.”
Being there for others was McQueen’s immediate impulse when the winter storm knocked out the power grid of the whole state of Texas. His own home was left without heat or electricity, but he had a whole warehouse full of water when it became a major factor in the crisis.
“You can live without food, but you can’t go too long without water,” McQueen said. “Water is a necessity. That’s why I started this business.”
In another Instagram posting, he put out word that he had water for those in need. He was still out there on Friday, delivering Jeepload after Jeepload.
“The problem with disasters like this is it hits the less fortunate hardest because they’re already the less fortunate,” he said.
He is keenly aware that those in need will remain in need of more than water when essential services are restored in Texas.
“There is no return to normal for them,” he said.
He can at least keep delivering water for the next few days, and even offered Cruz an opportunity to make some amends for having deserted Houston.
“I’ll put him to work,” McQueen said.
