rude Boys

Tell Everyone who you are and where you from.

Keni Myles: I’m Keni Myles of The Rude Boys, I’m from Indianapolis IN.

G. Labeaud: I am G. Labeaud from New Orleans, LA by way of Indianapolis, IN, also So that’s my second home. We’re in Georgia now!

Joe Little III: My name is Joe Little III, I am from Cleveland, OH the best place. The best place in the nation.

Let’s talk a little bit about your journey and how y’all got to where y’all are today.

Joe Little III: The Rude Boys first started in 1990, Gerald LeVert discovered us, of course, and that is what happened. We met Gerald LeVert in a nightclub. One of the other singers, Buddy Banks, and I was just sitting in doing a session with a lady named Evelyn Wright, who I used to do jazz sets with at a local nightclub. It was a lovely place, and you know one night I told Buddy, let’s go up to the club and sing with Evelyn and we sang that night and as we were singing, I saw Gerald standing on the stairs. I said Gerald, why don’t you come up here and sing with us, he looked like ahhhh, like he didn’t want to come up there, but he did come up there, thank God he did because we had a very explosive performance and later on that night Gerald was like man y’all are amazing. He said I want to work with you guys and the rest is history.

Tell us how did the great Rude Boys come together to begin with?

Joe Little III: The Rude Boys originally started in 1988 with me and Buddy Banks, who has passed away. After the Gospel group POWER, the first Rude Boys was Buddy, Jeff Rozier, Marc Jenkins and myself, then we converted to a band which was reconstructed with Rick Scovil on drums, Kyle Morris on Bass, Troy Henderson on keyboards, Larry Marcus on guitar and singers Melvin Sephus, Buddy Banks and myself. Buddy named the group Rude Boys. The name Rude Boys came from a button on Prince’s jacket on the controversy album. He had a round button that said rude boy. Buddy being a great major fan of Prince, which a lot of us were back then. It was either Michael Jackson or Prince from the 80s. Buddy just felt like we needed to start a group called the Rude Boys. At that time, I was like, OK well, whatever because I was young. I was still in high school coming out. We went around local places in Cleveland and all through Ohio “gigging,” and just doing our thing. When we met Gerald, we were a full group. Gerald only met me and buddy, and he was only interested honestly in me and Buddy. We had to at least bring our other two members, Melvin and Larry, and you know we came together. I convinced Gerald to put them in the group and so that’s what the Rude Boys did before we connected with Gerald. We did win a big competition called the Battle of the Bands in Ohio. We were the number one band and I think the only reason we won that night was because Larry set his guitar on fire onstage. Everybody remembers that in Cleveland. So, we were trying to make a name for ourselves in Ohio, in northeastern Ohio area and so that’s “The Rude Boys” before the rude boys.

What do you think made Gerald so great in that vein to be able to continue that legacy with other groups and artists?

Joe Little III: Gerald was an incredibly young man when he encountered us. At that time, I was like 21. So, at the time when Written

All Over Your Face came out, I was like 23 and Gerald was only two years older than that. So, we were all young. Gerald was far beyond his years within his maturity he was a very mature young man. He was a great leader. This guy was amazing and the work ethic that he had for the music game. He just really wanted to put Cleveland on the map, and we were his first project and as we went on he pulled in Men At Large of course, which you know he was successful with us because our first album spawned a smash single which was Written All Over Your Face, on the billboards and won R&B song of the year, and then we followed up with another number one with Are You Lonely, so therefore our first album, a rookie album, scored very well. Two number one hits. A hit and the award.

Gerald and I teamed up as writing partners and wrote a song for Men at Large called "So Alone"; I did a lot of backgrounds on mostly the whole album. "So Alone" went #2 on the

Billboard charts and therefore we’re still winning. You know, back in the day if you get on the Billboard charts alone you are winning. So, then we continued to go further, and we added a group called 1 of The Girls, which were signed to Elektra, our other girls group "Drama" we signed with Jam and Lewis. That didn’t go too well, but it was still the effort that was being put out and people’s names getting on the map. So, you figure if you are coming out on a national level and your video is on BET at that time you’ve made it! We continued to work on other groups, but those were the groups from Cleveland that he put on a national level and that he made national artists. Yeah, so that was Trevel Productions, which is LeVert spelled backwards.

What has it been like to make your way through the industry and be aligned within such an illustrious company?

G. Labeaud: I started when I was 14, I started singing and it was my first-time recording. My brother and I started a group called the LaBeaud Brothers. It was just the two of us. We were in high school, and we joined with a couple of our friends that were doing the same thing we were doing, Chris Kelly and Richard Chapman had joined and we formed a group called The Fellas. My partner David Morris also known as “D Love” was signed to LaFace Records and Rude Boys was performing in Indianapolis IN the year the Black Expo and he snuck us behind stage and then introduce us to Buddy Banks from the Rude Boys, we end up singing a song a cappella then sang that same song on national television that day at the Miss Black America pageant and Buddy gave me his phone number, we went to the hotel that same day and met Joe and the rest is history!

Where can the readers follow you?

Everyone can follow us @therealrudeboys