Alright finally got the hood open! I saw the thread to unscrew the latch. I unscrewed the 2 screws of the latch using a 10mm wrench halfway, joggle the hood a little and hit the release lever on the hood.
The mechanism was getting stuck. Guess it's this pollen season that dried up the latch.

Just got to tighten my cable a little and put some WD40 to oil down my latch mechanism.

Thanks yall!