THEY GOT IT FROM THEIR PAPA

Pleasure P, the Pretty Ricky R&B crooner with the most sexual swagitude on a 4’11” under-25-year-old I’ve ever had the good fortune to witness, has left the group. Pretty Ricky, in case you don’t know, is the semi-heavy-ro young rap & R&B group most likely to either A. give your little sister her first remote orgasm (sorry, but it’s true) or B. scare the crap out of her enough that she won’t have sex until she’s 35. They are known for such radio-friendly sex hits as “Grind With Me” and “On the Hotline,” and unforgettably porno album cuts like “Personal Trainer,” “Get You Wet” (featuring Plies!)* and “Peer Pressure.” I met them when I was covering the Scream Tour for VIBE last autumn with Joshua Wildman, and we all got kinda tight, at least as tight as you can get as a journalist/photographer duo covering a sibling R&B ensemble touring the midwest who badly wants press and is controlled by their Joe Jackson style dadager (New Year’s Eve text from Wildman: in miami just ran into pretty ricky no big deal)
It was crazy talking to their pops – he told me about how his dream was to get them in a group, and he had a successful business in Miami running a daycare, and he and one of their moms (they’re half brothers) invested a bunch of the daycare money into Pretty Ricky’s career, and now Pretty Ricky money is going back and actually helping expand the daycare. He also shaped the vision of the group, including the hypersexualized rap / R&B lyrics and dance moves, which totally makes me uncomfortable. (There was so much grinding going on in the Scream tour, which is really nothing unless you count the bathos of dudes wearing Hugh Hefner smoking jackets, white boxer shorts and white socks, and WHITE EYES WIDE SHUT BIRD MASKS, while straight-up freaking, like boner-freaking, dancers mere feet away from their brothers. It’s less the sex and more the over the top Greek sex fantasy combined with the gulp incestuous subtext which creeps me out i guess.) Let it be known I never, EVER want any elder of my family to witness me in the club when I’m on full-on grind time, dig? But I guess that’s what makes Pretty Ricky Pretty Ricky and me, me – I’m a freak to be sure, but they are less inhibited about dry humping empty beds in front of their parents. What can I say, I was raised Catholic.
So anyway, this is significant because Pleasure P is the brother / lead of the group, the most talented one, and the lead singer, who’s probably gonna try to put out a solo album. Pretty Ricky’s future hangs in the balance. What will become of Spectacular, Slick’em and Diamond Blue?
The relatively tame video for “On the Hotline” (note: Spectacular’s shower scene in this video is enacted shot for shot in their live show, including fake shower steam, white towel and spray-on sweat):

Also, for some reason in this video dudes are singing “Mo Money” on the chorus but the uncensored version they sing “so hornayyy… so hornaaayyyy.” Phone sex! THUG MOTIVATION, LET’S GET IT!
* contains the lyric “I wanna put it in yo butt”