June 18, 2008 @ 2:41 pm

STOKED Part Three

Linda Hobbs

It's B2K Week at VIBE.com. Read the third excerpt from the shocking story that has the internet buzzing.

Nobody knows what­ it takes better than Boog and Lil Fizz. The former teen pop stars, each 5-foot-7, sit at a table in the back of a cushy Beverly Hills restaurant wearing jeans and LRG shirts. The décor is Victorian, the menu prices are outrageous. A waiter pops up asking for their orders, but the guys politely shoo him away. Tonight they just want to talk.

Boog and Fizz have never spoken in detail about why B2K broke up four years ago. “All we knew was work,” says Fizz. “We were like little machines, that’s why we got onstage and be so on point, because that’s all we ever did.”

Then one day they simply disappeared, sprouting up every so often with an ill-fated stab at solo stardom—Lil Fizz had a rap album on Sony that fizzled, Boog has started his own label, and they are collaborating on a webisode-based reality show called Life After B2K. 

Born in New Orleans and raised in Inglewood, Calif., Fizz was 8 when recruited by talent scout Keisha Gamble to join a group that was going to be called Melodic.

“Every last one of those boys had that ‘It’ factor,” says Gamble, who still develops pop acts in Los Angeles. “I knew that they would be big.”

After years of development and rehearsals with her business partner/choreographer Dave Scott, she received a late-night phone call from Stokes, whom she’d met at age 15 when she worked as a dancer with Immature. 

Stokes wanted to know if Raz—who was still living in Cleveland, Ohio, at the time—could audition for Melodic, too. Gamble agreed. But when Gamble and Scott brought the group to Stokes, things didn’t turn out as planned. 

“Me and Keisha came to the decision that we didn’t want to be involved in that situation anymore,” says Scott, who continued to work as the group’s choreographer but turned over management duties to Stokes. “We were uncomfortable with the way [T.U.G.] ran business. Chris is very manipulative...to get what he wants,” says Scott, who still works as a choreographer in Los Angeles. “I just try to be a good businessperson and a good person in general, and everybody’s not like that.”

In their heyday, B2K could not have been more close-knit. Boog lived with his cousin Marques Houston and Omarion in a house in Diamond Bar, Calif. Jerome shared a Los Angeles house with Fizz, and Raz lived in Stokes’ Studio City home.

When they weren’t rehearsing, recording, performing, or promoting, most of the group’s time was spent trying to escape Stokes’ watchful eye. Parents were kept at a distance. All aspects of the kids lives, from stylists to accountants, were part of Stokes’ circle. “

It was a controlling thing,” says Boog. “The people he sent you to,” adds Fizz, “were all his people.” But if Stokes was watching the boys, they were also watching Stokes. As the tour money poured in, they say Stokes’ tastes grew more extravagant. Boog noticed that Stokes and Houston were living lavishly: “Big Jacuzzi jet tubs with the plasmas.”

Meanwhile, Fizz says they were told that they didn’t make any  money from their sold-out 2002 Scream 2 Tour, when they co-headlined with Bow Wow, or from the following year’s Scream 3 Tour, for which they were the sole headliners. “We were all asking each other, ‘How is there no money made?’” Fizz recalls. “It’s not making sense.”

The boys had had enough. While doing a series of fair dates, Boog, Fizz, Raz, and Omarion had a meeting. “All four of us made a decision,” says Fizz. “We wasn’t going to go back to those houses that was bought for us.” Instead they returned home to their parents and consulted lawyers.

Even as they worked on You Got Served, the members of B2K say they were planning to leave T.U.G. and relaunch B2K on their own.  But word of the plot got back to Stokes. Then one fateful day in late 2003, the conflict came to a head. After missing a morning meeting, Fizz and Boog were summoned to meet Stokes at a FedEx service center.

Fizz says Raz was nowhere to be found that day. When Boog and Fizz arrived, Omarion and Marques Houston were already there with Stokes and Taz, who led the boys around the corner into a field full of abandoned cars.

According to Fizz, who tells the story with resignation in his voice, “Chris and Taz are going back and forth like, ‘You want to say this?  You want to say this?’ So Taz is like, ‘Fuck it, I’ll say it: This shit is a wrap! B2K is over!’”

It’s after midnight, and Boog and Fizz are still reminiscing in the Beverly Hills restaurant. “I would have loved for it to be a B2K reunion,” says Fizz, “But I feel like Omarion messed it up. He’s played out now...after that Bow Wow move. I’m on a whole other page than you right now, homie.... You’re still talking about my ‘Girlfriend.’ He’s corny to me.”

Fizz recalls Stokes standing silently as Taz went off on them: “And that nigga right there?” she said, darting a finger at Omarion, “He solo! It’s a wrap! We’ve spent eight hours black-balling y’all. Y’all can’t do shit! Don’t even come to the studio for an album, that nigga Omari gon’ do it by himself!” “This nigga told everything!” Fizz says with exasperation.

He says Omarion broke down in tears when confronted with his betrayal.  Stokes denies that any such conversation took place. He offers a very different account of the breakup that stunned millions of fans. 

“Honestly, it had nothing to do with me,” he says with a laugh. “It was over women. A lot of people don’t know that. It was over girls between the guys. They stopped getting along.” They stuck it out long enough to wrap up shooting on You Got Served in 2003.

“They only got like $75,000 a piece to do the movie,” says Damuer Leffridge, a close friend and business partner of Boog. After deductions, he says they kept just over $20,000. “Once again, a terrible contract.” But according to Leffridge, in late 2003, Stokes kicked Boog, Fizz, and Raz out of the homes they once shared and “had their stuff put out on the sidewalk.” As Leffridge tells it, just months after starring in what would be the No. 1 movie in America, Boog, Fizz, and Raz were broke and homeless.

“Chris bought the food, the cars, the housing,” says Leffridge, “so once they decided to go a different way, they were on their own.” Stokes insists that “they did leave with money” and that “how they spent it was up to them.” After B2K broke up, he says, “Omari and his mother completely audited me, which is something I requested. They pulled every bit of books and records from everything....  Omari wouldn’t be here all these years if someone was taking something from him. Actually B2K owes me money,” he says, adding that he waived half a million dollars in management fees.

“I don’t owe B2K any money. I don’t take money from my artists.”

He blames “very bad associates” for convincing the other B2K members to “attack” him. “When people are hungry and they’re not eating,” he says, “they do all kinds of things.  That’s what you’re seeing and it’s so sad.” After bouncing from manager to manager, eventually Boog, Fizz, and Raz moved into the Palazzo apartments together.

“That’s when they all snapped back and started looking for houses and trying to make things happen,” says Leffridge, who operates a Beverly Hills real estate firm.  When they came in wanting to buy a house, he ran their credit...and there was none.

“I’m looking at them like, ‘How are you going to buy a house?  There’s no money.’” Once the movie blew up, they got $300,000 apiece through what Leffridge calls “a very hard and tense negotiation.”

Come back to VIBE.com tomorrow for part 4 of “STOKED.”

Read "STOKED" Part 1.
Read "STOKED" Part 2.

Article tags: Chris Stokes, B2K, Omarion, Marques Houston, Immature 

Tweet this...

Page printed from:
http://www.vibe.com/news/online_exclusives/2008/06/stoked_part_three_b2k/

Return to previous page