In 1990, a 21-year-old producer named CHRIS STOKES recruited three Los Angeles elementary school students to create an R&B- flavored pop group known as Immature. His intense, hands-on management style led to a successful run of soundtrack cuts, albums, movies, and a recurring TV role for breakout star Marques Houston. A decade later, Stokes outdid himself with B2K, a teen quartet that sold millions of records, starred in the hit movie You Got Served, and packed concert arenas across the country. Though lead singer Omarion would go on to solo stardom, the group, whose name signified “Boys of the New Millennium,” lasted only three years before breaking up amid whispers of internal strife and financial disputes. Late last year, two artists Stokes once managed charged the self-described “King of Black Boy Bands” with sexual abuse. A flurry of denials and retractions did little to quiet the rumors and speculation. Aside from a terse press release, Stokes has neverpublicly discussed the allegations against him—until now. What happens to child stars when the music’s over? Linda Hobbs investigates.
It all started one day when Chris [Stokes] said, ‘Let me touch it
He reaches into the glove compartment, pulls out a blue medicine bottle, lifts a magazine from the floor, and sprinkles Blue Dream (a powerful strain of Cali chronic) onto the glossy cover. He rolls a blunt, but doesn’t light it. “It’s a prescription,” he saysalmost gleefully, producing a doctor’s note. “It basically gets you happy, keeps you motivated. I only smoke it before bedtime.”
But today, he explains, he’s been up for 24 hours doing studio work. “So this keeps me up. It’s like my Red Bull.” Ricky is the cousin of entertainment impresario Chris Stokes. He was briefly a member of Stokes’ pop trio, Immature.
“Everyone thinks that Chris Stokes put me in the game,” says Ricky. “But who put me in the game is actually my ‘big brother,’ James DeBarge. He’s Janet Jackson’s first husband or whatever. He’s been a big inspiration in my life. The first song I’ve ever done was with him and El DeBarge.... I thought I was really going to be an artist and blow up and make it.”
Instead, Ricky went on the road as promotions manager for Stokes’ biggest boy band ever, B2K. “I was carrying bags for the boys,” he says. “I was selling all the merchandise to fans. They’d see me—I was onstage making announcements in front of 30,000 girls. Hey, what’s up, girls?! How many of y’all want to see B2K?”
The music is pounding so loud the car jiggles. Ricky’s playing demos of some of the artists he manages under a fledgling company called JMC Management Group. According to JMC’s MySpace page, Ricky is the CEO, the COO is somebody named E-Jizza, and the CFO is Ricky’s younger brother Raz B, formerly of B2K, who didn’t come along for the ride. One of JMC’s artists, a rapper named Orlando Brown—better known as Eddie Thomas from the hit Disney Channel series That’s So Raven—sits silent in the backseat of the Altima.
He and Ricky are draped in ice. Though Ricky looks flashy today, he’s much better known as one of the dudes who set off a firestorm of controversy last Christmas Eve in a pair of YouTube videos that accused Stokes of “molestation type of shit.”
In Ricky’s clip, he spoke about members of Immature taking showers together. He called to berate someone identified as Stokes, and the voice on the phone said, “I don’t do that no more.” Raz’s clip was even more graphic: “It all started one day when Chris [Stokes] said, ‘Let me touch it,’” he said in the dimly lit video, glancing at the camera with a pained expression.
“I didn’t even know what the hell I was doing as a child,” he said. “It’s like, nigga brainwashed.”
He suggested that other Stokes artists might have been abused. “Somebody musta liked it,” he said on the clip. “I tell ya I didn’t like it. I tell ya my ass hurt!” Stokes was quick to respond: “The accusations that DeMario ‘Raz B’ Thornton and Ricardo Thornton have made are vehemently false and hold no merit,” read the statement that was e-mailed the same day the videos were uploaded.
“I have recently stopped financially supporting both individuals along with assisting them in their criminal and legal matters, which leads me to believe they are resentful and looking to benefit financially from this.”
B2K’s breakout star Omarion also issued a statement: “‘Raz B’ Thornton and Ricardo Thornton are lying regarding Chris Stokes. Chris is a father figure to myself, and many others in the industry. He’s guided us, helped raise us, and is nothing more than an inspiration and someone I respect and look up to. I have spent countless hours, days, weeks, and months with the man since the age of 5 and have never once seen him behave inappropriately. He’s married to my aunt and I know this man very well. I stand behind him with no question whatsoever.”
Omarion had no questions, but many others did. The videos stirred the blogosphere into an uproar, turned the Thornton brothers’ lives upside down, and seemed to crush any lingering hopes of a B2K reunion. But then, three days later, Raz B appeared in another YouTube video. Standing on a residential street, he formally withdrew his accusations and apologized for “some tapes that were leaked without my authority.”
Raz’s sudden retraction did not slow the avalanche of attention, especially with his brother Ricky giving interviews to blogs and radio stations claiming that the apology was fake. “Chris had people force Raz to read a script,” Ricky told one blog in late December 2007, “and coerced him into taking money.”
In another interview, Ricky said that “some street niggas” had forced his brother to issue the apology but that he himself refused to be silenced. “Niggas are threatening my life, but I don’t care,” said Ricky in another December interview. “I stand by what I said because it’s the truth. Maybe I’m the only one brave enough to talk, but this has gone on for too long. I just want Chris’ sick, child-molesting pedophile ass to go to jail.”
But soon even Ricky would change his tune.
Come back to VIBE.com tomorrow for part 2 of “STOKED.”
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