Pretty Ricky

Back in 2002, when regional success was the surest way of predicting superstardom, no group was bigger in Miami than the neo-R&B stars Pretty Ricky. Their first single, “Flossin’”, was inescapable thanks to its constant appearance on the Florida Power 96 station, and just a few years later, they leveraged that local goodwill into a national audience that became enamoured with their intoxicatingly fresh play on R&B. In their early days, the group pioneered an electric, sexified revamp of the genre, alongside a new generation of stars and acts like Usher, Omarion and 112. The band is fronted by Marcus Cooper―a.k.a. Pleasure P―while brothers Ala Diamond and Spectacular Smith rap alongside fourth member Corey Mathis, giving Pretty Ricky an edge over more traditional artists that emphasised sultry vocal performances. They followed up “Flossin’” with “Ride With Me”, which infiltrated dance floors and bedrooms across the country due to Pleasure P’s infectious chorus and the unrelenting energy of the group’s rap verses. After a three-year hiatus that ended in 2015, the group spent the rest of the 2010s touring, then in early 2020 released a new single, “Body”, that showcased their penchant for raunchy hooks and rapidfire flows. Pretty Ricky began this millennium as upstarts blending together rap and R&B. Now they’re the veterans, and the fingerprints of their iconic style are all over the hip-hop industry.