Today we’d like to introduce you to Stefon Washington, PrettyRicoBandz.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I got started around 2009 with a boy band in Orlando called 3 am. The group was wildly popular. I remember we stayed on school tours nonstop, getting chased everywhere, lol. All good things come to an end and the group decided to split. At that point, I showed up at Disney audition for a show called “Disney Channel Rocks.” A shot in the dark, but they liked me.
After all the auditions I made it! Crazy, and it was literally some of the best times of my life. With Disney, you encounter so many talented people that you have so many opposites, yet so much similarities. Make friends you never thought, and make people smile daily. That went on for a few years, then the show ended. After Disney it was hard to get work, sucked even more cuz everyone was getting work, whether it was overseas, cruise ships, and I couldn’t catch a break. I started working at subway just to try to make rent. The hardest time for me. I woke one day and said, I’m going to Atlanta, I’m going to start over. With barely anything to my name, I went. A friend of mines convinced me to go with him to the set of the Tupac Biopic “All Eyes On Me.”
One day on set I was making fun of Diddy and Mimicking him and someone pulled me aside, asked if I could act, felt like everything happened so fast because next thing you know I’m casted as Puff Daddy in a major motion picture and I see myself on media takeout, tmz, and the E network among other sites and blogs. That was a huge turning point for me in my acting career, and somehow it made music come back around for me. I ran into Yung Joc, and he heard the music I was making and became my manager. From there, I got casted as Puff Daddy again for the Oxygen Snapped Episode about Tupac, went on tour musically, stepped out on my own and moved on from Yung Joc as my manager and changed my music name to separate Stefon Washington as an actor and Pretty Rico Bandz as a singer. Now my EP “Pink” is available everywhere and is almost at 500k streams. Currently in Orlando recording my new project while flying to Atlanta a couple of days out the week, shooting videos and pushing the Pretty Rico Bandz Brand. No rest for the hungry but it’ll be worth it in the end.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Nothing is ever smooth. I think the hardest thing to cope and understand is that everything either comes to an end or makes a change that you have to deal and reposition with. It’s easy to get used to things, but that’s why when disaster strikes we panic. In this industry, you have to be ready, you can get a deal, lose it years later unexpectedly. Get a movie role and struggle for roles after. Release a hit single and struggle trying to get a new record released. It’s not for the weak at all.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
For me as an Rnb singer, it’s rare for someone to do everything. I’ve spent so many years without a team I’ve become self-sufficient. I produce a majority of my records. I write all of my records, a lot of the time I record myself. I love the idea that I can go into a room alone and come out with a completed album alone in a week. It’s not many like me, but because of that, I teach anyone I can to be self-sufficient. Spreading the knowledge that we can do it all sometimes too.
In terms of your work and the industry, what are some of the changes you are expecting to see over the next five to ten years?
These days I’m making Grammy music. It’s not about the actual award more than it’s about making the absolute best body of work EACH TIME where it needs to be in the conversation of the best albums of the decade. I feel as artists, we have the capability to create at least three of those. After I’d want to work behind the scenes, sign artists. Work on an executive level and create the next great movement. I’m not abandoning acting. I’m writing scripts, telling my own stories. It’s a lot of underrated actors out there that deserve to be seen. So I’ll do what I can do show them off.
Contact Info:
- Email: PrettyRicoBandz@gmail.com
- Instagram: @prettyricobandz
- Facebook: Facebook.com/PrettyRicoBandz
- Twitter: @PrettyRicoBandz
- Youtube: youtube.com/channel/UC81p5tGiWWDwnpDZR9CkC-Q
Image Credits
Eddie Taylor
