So you guys are all blood brothers? Yeah, we’ve got the same daddy. Did he come up with the idea to form the group? Yeah, it was our daddy. He came up with the idea and we ran with it. He kinda put it together about seven years ago. You see how many pictures you got of us in OZONE, so you know we been at it for a long time! Yeah, and we always tease you guys about the glitter outfits you wear in the photos. Who’s idea was that? Basically we just tried to be unique and different, cause all the other artists are wearing their little white tees. We just wanted to be known everywhere, to be seen. Everywhere we go, the glitter gets stuck in their heads. Well, the glitter caught everybody’s attention. But what’s the next “look” for you guys? Are you going for a more grown-up image now? We gonna do it all. We got like a hundred looks. We ain’t nothing to be expected. The glitter got us where we at right now, but we gonna try a bunch of stuff. One day you might see us in some army fatigues and a bulletproof vest. I don’t know how to explain it; we just do what we do. Right now there’s a void in the music industry as far as “boy bands,” like, now that B2K has broken up, there’s no groups really filling in that slot. Is that your goal, to appeal to the younger female audience? We targeting girls like you. We targeting everybody; we tryin’ to get you freaky-deeky super wet. Everybody in the group got a different category. If a girl don’t like the pretty boy, she can get the lil’ wild thug. But, we make music for everybody, and our album comes with two versions: clean and dirty. You know how politics are. [Our single] “Grind On Me” is kinda explicit, so we recorded two albums so everybody could listen to our music. I first heard you guys when you had the song “Flossin’” out a while back. It seems like you have real songwriting abilities. Where do you think that came from? We make feel-good music, and evyerobyd in the group is talented. We write our own music. Our daddy had a record label back in the day with Piccalo, Black Haze, and everybody in Miami, so when we was growing up, we learned a lot just from being around them. Pitbull and Trick Daddy are like our uncles. We got a strong leader, old boy, so we just focused. We already know what we need to do. Pitbull and everybody from Miami done taught us the game, so we just moving like that. We gonna stay focused regardless.
(l to r): Slick ‘Em, Spectacular, Baby Blue, and Pleasure
ventures you’d like to do in the future? We gonna be the next Russell Simmons and the next Puff Daddy. We got our own clothing line coming out, it’s called Marco de Bleu. We’re gonna have a cartoon coming out, and we got a reality show on MTV we’re working on. We’re gonna be the next sex symbols out of the South. What’s the name of your album? Blue Stars. Do you have a release date? Blue Stars comes out on May 24th. Is most of the material on the album similar to “Grind On Me”? Everything we do is for the ladies. We got a couple joints for the fellas, though. We try to cover everything. We’ve got love songs, hate songs, sex songs, everything. We’re trying to bring slow music back to the club. We try to cover everything, though. We got other records for the freaks out there, we got some club records, and we got some thug records. We just try to cover the whole nine yards. What label are you signed to? We got our own label, Blue Star Entertainment, and we’re on Atlantic.
Did you have any formal music training in school? Nah, we just learned everything on our own. It’s basically natural. This is just the tip of the iceberg as far as what we can do. Everything in music is just common sense for us. If it’s a guitar, drop it in the studio and give us a month or two to learn how to use it and we gonna learn how to play that shit. Back in the day, it wasn’t no instructions, we just had to figure it out.
How did you get your deal with Atlantic Records? “Grind With Me” ended up being the #1 most requested record in the history of Miami [on Power 96] and Craig Kallman from Atlantic Records came down to see us. We performed for him at the hotel. We ain’t really know who he was. That was during Martin Luther King weekend. We invited him out to our show, and the girls were chasing us. They were breaking down the barriers and screaming. We had to get police escorts because the girls were tryin’ to get to us. When we got in the van we had them running like four blocks chasing us. After that, it was a done deal.
Aside from music, do you have any plans for other companies or other
The screaming girls convinced him? He was like, “It’s unbelievable that you aren’t
signed yet.” Yup, the glitter did it for us. So for everybody who didn’t like the glitter, y’all can keep hatin’. Do you have a second single picked out to follow up “Grind With Me”? The crazy thing is that we can’t decide on the single. We’ve got so many songs. We’ve been doing it for so long, any song that we pick out of all of them could be singles. Are there any major features or producers on your album? We work with Jim Jonsin a lot as far as production. He did “Let’s Go” for Trick Daddy and “Dammit Man” for Pitbull. That’s about it. We tried to keep the album hometeam. We gonna let everybody know that we could do it in Florida the same way ATL and New York are doing it. You be everywhere, so you know how it is. It’s time for all of Florida to come together and do it. We tryin’ to keep it hometeam. We did a record with Pitbull, too. We got another feature from Static, he wrote a lot of songs for Aaliyah and Genuwine. And there’s gonna be an international album. What’s gonna be different about the international album? It’ll have the reggaetone version of “Grind With Me” and stuff like that. Do you have a tour planned? Where can we see Pretty Ricky over the next few months? On the road, on the road, on the road. That’s how they got us right now. We just workin’, goin’ from city to city. Anything else you wanna say? Check out www.prettyricky.com and make sure you go get that album on May 24th. Check out Soul Train on May 7th. You can catch us in the May edition of Vibe Magazine, and OZONE, of course we all over that. Julia, we wanna interview you for the next sex issue! - Words & photo by Julia Beverly OZONE MAY 2005
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