The Royal Prince Club

“In a word; breathtaking. No… sexy. No, um, I don’t know. They’re just the best!” swoons one wide-eyed young lady in search of a superlative that might fittingly describe her favourite new R ‘n’ B troupe, The Royal Prince Club. It seems she’s not the only one trying to articulate her excitement, as chattering groups of hyped females spill out on to the street with a collective nervous energy that manifests itself as an audible buzz. They’ve just come from seeing The RPC, who have just finished playing a one hour set for a sweaty, jittery audience of woman of a variety of ages.
The Royal Prince Club; a name partly derived as a result of band member J-Leezy’s royal parentage (his Father is the Duke of Dutch-Ceylon); effortlessly charms its audiences with its unique, mature and sophisticated brand of modern R’n’B and Soul. There is a particular blend of sexiness and spontaneity in their performances, both live and on record that manages to appeal equally to teen girls and mature ladies alike. All one need to is take a look at RPC’s live audiences; women in their teens through to ladies well into middle age; each equally enthralled (and often quite smitten) with the performers onstage.
Taking their queues from visionaries like Boys II Men, New Edition, Blackstreet and Jodeci, the RPC bring classic 90’s R’n’B into the new millennium, updating the sound and delivering lyrics that hit in turns between the heart and the loins. “I think that we’re all really genuine performers” says Teddy, the group’s deep-voiced, smoother-than-smooth lady killer, “we each have a lot of soul that we express in different ways. But I think what surprises a lot of people are our lyrics. A lot of times, people just think “oh yeah, an R’n’B group, its just going to be one romantic cliché after another” but we are quite unique in that respect. I think we speak right from the heart, and we do it in a way that others don’t, or cant do. But we do it, baby; we can do it in a number of different ways…we can do it however you like it… and we can do it all night long…”
Admittedly, the group does indeed sing about things that might make Prince blush. Yet, they manage to do so with a kind of sensitivity and delicacy that somehow defies the generic stereotypes that ultimately doomed the band’s 90’s predecessors. “We really respect those people we consider to be our musical forefathers” explains Chubbs, the group’s super-confident, intense and mysterious vocal virtuoso, “and what we do is really the next step in what we see as a royal lineage. As the name suggests, we are the sovereign princes of R’n’B Soul.” Its hard to argue with that kind of confidence, because that kind of confidence translates directly onto record. And with a debut CD due in 2008, the RPC is about to display that confidence to the whole world.
J-Leezy, the gorgeous, happy-go-lucky good-times boy of the band (if your father was a Duke, what would you have to worry about?!) explains; “We just love what we do. We are like brothers. When we started this band [they formed in the summer of 2006] we just knew that there was something special in it. We started singing together and everybody got goose-bumps. My girlfriend at the time came to our first rehearsal. We sang “Every good woman needs a good man (inside)” and she passed out. We knew there and then that we weren’t imagining things; that we had something magical going on”
Magic indeed. RPC are truly taking the genre to the next level. To hear them is to be refreshed, excited, and stimulated. With the album due next year, the world is about to get a taste of a band on the verge of massive success. Stay tuned, because the Royal Prince Club are about to take their rightful place on the throne of Rhythm and Blues, and the music world is about to get a whole….lot….sexier…..
All hail the new rulers of R’n’B!