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Just past midnight on a chilly February night, Club
Chrome is heating up. The nightclub on Springfield’s south side is
packed to the gills with teenagers clad in myriad shades of red, yellow,
and green; the spacious dance floor has been transformed into an ersatz
exercise studio as young women and girls — and a handful of boys
— wiggle, twist, pop, shake, and bounce to the beats of DJ Rico P. Rico has asked that single-and-ready-to-mingle guests
of his Stoplight Party, held days before Valentine’s Day, wear green.
Those only interested in friendship are to don yellow. Couples and
partygoers involved in committed relationships should be in red and
therefore in theory off limits to romantic advances. Instead of turntables, Rico uses his Dell laptop,
loaded with software that allows him to mix, scratch, and fade just as the
original practitioners of the Bronx-born art form did. Periodically he
leaves the DJ booth for pictures and to mingle with his hundreds of guests.
Some of them have traveled from Decatur, Bloomington,
Peoria, and the Metro East, rolling three or four cars deep, just for the
chance to attend one of Rico’s now-legendary Springfield parties.
Many of them spend as much as $200 on this single event in their efforts to
dress to impress. To the uninitiated, the frenzied crowd of 15- to
20-year-olds seems to teeter on the brink of chaos, capable of blowing the
roof off at any moment. They are, in fact, simply letting off steam. With
all the trappings of modern teenage life — schoolwork, college
entrance exams, extracurricular activities, nagging parents, and the
delicate matter of arranging one’s Top Friends list — young
people want and need to unwind just as much as adults do.
But in Springfield, and surrounding cities, teens
have few safe options for those times when they need to cut loose and get
crunk. House parties, replete with alcohol, dope, and sex, are an
unfortunate but common alternative. Some young people chill out on vacant
lots or cruise in traffic — long trains of vehicles meandering
through the streets of Springfield late at night — until the cops
shoo them away or the scene devolves into fistfights or worse. Rico Perkins saw the need. A few years ago the
self-described former nerd cut his hair, danced his way to
hippest-kid-in-school status, and threw a party for his friends. Since that
first success Rico has become one of the most popular promoters for
Springfield’s under-21 crowd in memory.
Rico’s army of admirers includes members of
both sexes and spans central Illinois. Through meticulous planning,
intensive marketing efforts, and the kind of personal attention to customer
service that many American businesses lost years ago, the 19-year-old is
slowly establishing himself as a brand. Be it eschewing invitations to lend
his name to other promoters’ events or agonizing over the perfect
digital image for use on a custom airbrushed backdrop, Rico takes the
management of his brand very seriously. “I wouldn’t say there’s more
pressure now — but, like, today I was going back and forth trying to
decide: ‘Should I get dressed up just to go to the barber
shop?’ ” Rico says. He is sporting a smoothly pressed
lemon-yellow polo shirt, and a diamond stud adorns his left earlobe. It soon becomes clear that he’s not being
conceited, either. As he sits next to his mother, Peggy Perkins, in a
booth at Cheddar’s, where the family eats supper once a week, a
passing waitress asks Rico when his next party will be, then offers to
place a stack of fliers in the restaurant. Similar scenes play out wherever he goes, Rico
explains, almost blushing. Later a girl of about 15, dining with friends,
spots Rico from across the restaurant and whispers in disbelief: “Oh
my God — look, there goes Rico!”
Rico’s parties, which he began hosting in 2006,
when he was still in high school, are so widely praised simply because they
provide something to do. That may not sound like much of a compliment —
after all, watching grass grow is something to do — but in a city
that has seen entertainment options for teenagers come and go faster than
tour groups at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum, having something to
do is a big deal. There have been several attempts over the years.
Total Eclipse, located on Toronto Road, stood as the area’s only teen
dance club for three years until local, state, and federal law enforcement
officials initiated a drug sting in 2001. Several years later Club 10, a
popular teen haunt on North Bradfordton Road, was shut down because the
owners had not obtained zoning approval for use as a live-music venue [see
Todd Spivak, “Unplugged,” July 29, 2004]. Today the Black Sheep Café, in
Springfield’s old South Town neighborhood, is a beacon for teenaged
adherents to the so-called straightedge lifestyle, characterized by
abstention from drugs, cigarettes, and alcohol and a love of punk rock. Kevin Bradford, who owns the Black Sheep, has fought
several minor battles in the three years the venue has been in business. In
2005, building-code violations threatened to keep the Black Sheep from
opening. Recently a resident complained about Black Sheep patrons’
parking and “partying” in neighbors’ alleys. Bradford, 25, says those issues have been resolved.
He’s just focused on giving kids an outlet through which they can
express themselves, he says. “The city pretty much leaves us alone. I think
because they realize we’re trying to do something positive for the
kids. It’s easy to pick on kids — they’re easy targets. I
think people are afraid of kids just having fun and expressing themselves.
Anything that isn’t mainstream is looked at with suspicion,”
Bradford says. Activities are even more limited for the members of
the demographic who are likely to attend a Rico party — young fans of
rap music and hip-hop dances. Springfield’s MC R-Two the Second,
né Ryne Goodrich, also understands the challenges of trying to
introduce something unfamiliar to Springfield. Five years ago, he says,
when he first started rhyming, there was no hip-hop scene in Springfield. By persuading club owners to allow him to spit a few
verses once a month and opening for heavy metal bands, R-Two and his peers
helped establish a now solid hip-hop community. R-Two, who works at Grant
Middle School, says he sees the same the same kind of determination in Rico
and has overheard excited youngsters discussing Rico’s parties. Such success and notoriety have brought problems,
however. As Rico’s events have increased in popularity and sheer
numbers, he’s struggled to find places that can accommodate the
hordes of close to 1,000 kids that he normally attracts. Bigger venues call
for larger deposits, more security, additional promotion, and more work for
Rico. A city ordinance proposed this spring, limiting the
number of under-21 events a particular venue may hold to three per year,
was prompted in part by concerns over kids’ cruising the streets of
Springfield on the same nights as Rico parties. The plan, put forth by Ward
2 Ald. Gail Simpson, who said at the time that she wanted to improve the
image of her ward, would have affected just one establishment, Chrome. It
failed by an overwhelming majority. Springfield Police Chief Ralph Caldwell reported to
the City Council that “normally the problems aren’t
inside” but crop up, rather, when partygoers spill out of the venue.
Caldwell went on to acknowledge that “the double edge of the sword
is, you don’t have a lot of places where kids can go.”
The club’s owner, Neil Patel, invited aldermen
to tour his club, which he makes available to several all-ages promoters.
Patel says he’s overcome several barriers since he’s owned the
business, including a seven-year-long fight to obtain a 3 a.m. liquor
permit, which he says he would never put in jeopardy. He notes that his bar is cordoned off during all-ages
events and that, as a result, he’s never received a citation for
underage liquor sales. So far this year, he’s held 15 all-ages
events; last year there were 31 such events at Chrome.
Patel says the controversy his club sometimes
attracts is worth the hassle if it means making things easier for the next
generation of young promoters and club owners. “I grew up here, and I grew up saying,
‘Damn there’s nothing to do,’ ” Patel says.
“I started DJing at 15 and said after college I’d come back and
open a club. That’s why I don’t mind doing all-ages
shows.”
His fans all say the same thing, more or less:
Ain’t no party like a Rico party. Rico holds his events once every couple of months, on
average. He spaces them out so they don’t conflict with his
coursework at the University of Illinois at Springfield where he’s
majoring in business and minoring in communications. The long intervals
also build anticipation and ensure a large turnout. Rico’s marketing strategy is basic but
effective: A Miami company designs and prints 5,000 brightly colored
4-by-6-inch glossy fliers and 20 posters, then ships them to Springfield,
where they are distributed at the salons, barbershops, nail studios, and
clothing stores where people who attend his parties are likely to see them.
The flier also serves as the background of his MySpace page, through which
Rico sends out two or three reminders per day, as well as personal page
comments. People appreciate that Rico begins promoting at least
one month in advance, making it possible for them to save or budget
accordingly. Tickets to the parties average $10 if you buy them at the
door. Girls can pay $20 for one of the prized high-visibility spots up
onstage. Advance tickets are sold at a discount. Rico is
willing to personally deliver them or make himself available for a short
period at a particular location for anyone who wants to come to him and buy
tickets. He declines to disclose how the money is split between himself and
the venue or what he pays in upfront, out-of-pocket expenses, such as
security. In addition to 12 to 15 private security guards, one
or two off-duty Springfield police officers are always present, and
sometimes an SPD traffic detail is parked outside the party. Most
Springfield high schools and Illinois prisons don’t offer as much
security, relatively speaking. Darren Severado, whose firm FKZ, or Fat Kidz,
provides security services for several Springfield bars and private
parties, such as those hosted by Rico, says that when tempers do flare his
guys defuse the situation quickly, escorting the rowdies from party one at
a time. Hair picks, straight combs, pepper spray, and all outside drinks,
no matter how innocuous, are verboten. Bouncers keep an eye on the dance floor, where most
problems occur, often when young ladies bump into one another as they
gyrate. Severado takes other precautions to keep things from getting too
heated. “If you come in there almost naked, I’m going to tell
you to go home,” he says. He also requests that Rico not play certain
songs that contain violent lyrics. As for other songs that are popular with kids but to
adult ears are the musical equivalent of sitting in the passenger seat
while teaching a teenager to drive, Severado, a former MP in the Army, says
he simply can’t tolerate it. “More times than not I have earplugs in,”
he says. Clearly part of the party’s appeal is that the
vibe is so unappealing to anybody over, say, the age of 23 — or
anybody born before Krush Groove hit the theaters — and for fans of the Rico
party, if you’re not there you’re square. Larry Hinds, who recently moved to Springfield from
Illiopolis, has attended several Rico events. “The day of a Rico party, everybody I call
says, ‘I’m going to that Rico party.’ Sometimes
I’ll tell myself I’m not going and I’ll call my friends
to go see a new movie or something. They’re all going to Rico’s
party, and they’ll convince me I need to come out,” Hinds says.
On the night of a Rico party, 17-year-old Katana
Wilder meets up with about 15 friends at a Decatur filling station around
10 p.m., after which their caravan of three or four vehicles proceeds to
Springfield. Wilder, who works at a Decatur hospital and spends
approximately $150 for each party she attends, says she appreciates that
Rico gets the word out early enough to plan the perfect outfit. As
excessive as the amount seems, what Wilder shells out is average for female
attendees: new clothes, shoes, a fresh hairstyle, nails, and, of course, a
ticket. Fellas, who prefer to wear high-priced sneakers and
top off their ensembles with matching ball caps, often spend more than the
ladies — as much as $200. Boys and girls both guffaw at the idea of
arriving in anything less than all-brand-new clothes. Some do their
shopping in St. Louis to avoid the horror of arriving at the party in the
same outfit as someone else. However, the main attraction is, without a doubt, the
music. Rico previously paid someone to spin, but after guests complained
that one DJ played too many old songs, such as Lil John’s “Snap
Ya Fingers,” from 2006, Rico invested in a software program and
learned to do it himself. People just respond better to him, he discovered.
Right when the crowd gets amped up, he’ll slip in a twangy country
& western tune or the Barney theme song — and the crowd loves it. Gary
Wilson, 16, a friend of Rico’s younger brother, Emilio, puts it
succinctly: “The parties be crackin’ because everybody be
there, the music is right, the DJ is on point, and the atmosphere is on
point.”
Wilson is typical of the young men in that he prefers
to “get his sway on,” as opposed to dancing, unless he’s
being juked, when a girl performs a series of frenetic dance moves, often
bumping or grinding against her male partner. The juking is sometimes so
intense that a couple of the young man’s friends must provide
physical support to keep him from falling down. Twenty-one-year-old Letoyia Snow, who attends
Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville and is on the older end of the
spectrum for fans of the parties, says she prefers them to the
stuffed-shirt environs of 21-and-over clubs. Songs focused on the female posterior, such as
“Donk” by 17-year-old Souljah Boy, seem to really get the crowd
moving. Rico’s playlist includes both hot new rap songs — the
Pop It Off Boyz’s “Crank Dat Batman,” Webbie’s
“Independent,” Lil Wayne’s remix to
“Lollipop” — and never-before-heard cuts. He also plays
what he characterizes as old-school jams, such as “Back That Thing
Up,” released by Juvenile in 1999. For couples who want to slow
dance, he also throws a little R&B (e.g., Usher’s “Love in
This Club” remix) into the mix. Rico’s personal tastes tend to be more refined.
When he’s alone he likes to listen to music from the New Jack Swing
era of the early 1990s, he says. For younger crowds — Rico was hired
to last year DJ a dance at his alma mater, Southeast High School — he
plays clean versions of songs. “Sometimes I don’t want to hear all that
‘girls shaking their butts’ stuff,” he says, then shrugs,
“but at parties I play what the kids want to hear.”
Six-foot-two, lean, and handsome, Rico exudes quiet
confidence. Part of it stems from the love, support, and watchful eye of his mother,
Peggy. She thoroughly vetted each of her sons’ prospective playmates
and isn’t ashamed to say that Rico’s childhood, spent growing
up on the northeast side near Clearlake Avenue, was sheltered. Rico wasn’t a jock — he was into books,
she says proudly, just as her eldest son reaches over to wipe away a dollop
of salad dressing that has dripped onto her cell phone, as she rattles off
Rico’s academic accomplishments. “I was a kid that wasn’t popular at all.
I got bullied. I would come home crying, saying, ‘These guys are
picking on me,’ ” Rico recounts. Something happened around the time that he shaved his
mop top. Under all that hair was a pretty boy, and girls started liking
him. Rico had another ace up his sleeve to solidify his burgeoning
popularity: He was known around school, he says, as “the white boy
that can dance” (though, Peggy interjects, he’s actually
multiracial.) Rico put his popularity to the test during his senior
year at Southeast High School, hosting a homecoming-dance afterparty. Even
after months of planning, he was a nervous wreck. He’d distributed
thousands of fliers, which he designed himself using his school’s
computers, hired a DJ and security detail, and put down a $250 deposit to
rent Skateland North for the evening Even longtime friends such as Erica Hill say that Rico’s foray
into the world of hip-hop party promoting came as a surprise: “When
we first saw the first flier, we were like, ‘Rico? Really?’
”
Aside from the fact that Rico would lose his deposit
unless 50 people showed up and rented skates, the embarrassment of facing
his schoolmates on Monday should the party be poorly attended would have
crushed the 18-year-old’s fragile ego. The high-school dance ended at 11 o’clock.
Rico’s skating party was scheduled to commence at midnight. Within
the first half-hour Rico ensured that he would get the full deposit
returned. Hill says the line outside was so long that she feared that she
might not get inside. Rico estimates that close to 700 teenagers from all
corners of Springfield, so many that the rink ran out of skates to rent,
attended the first party.
Peggy has remained, at Rico’s insistence, a
constant presence at the parties, usually standing at the door to take
tickets. So many partygoers’ parents and relatives are friends of
Peggy’s that the parties have the feel of a middle-school birthday
party. Rico’s dad, Frank Perkins, takes pictures and Emilio, his kid brother, also
helps out. Extroverted though Rico may be at his parties, in
real life he still shows flashes of the quiet, shy kid he used to be. For
example, he has more than 2,200 MySpace friends but fewer than 200 contacts
stored in his iPhone. When one of his parties ends, usually around 1 a.m.,
Rico prefers hanging out with his family to cruising around in traffic with
people from the party. “The parties have given me a lot of confidence.
The respect I get — all of that created this confident person,”
Rico says. Rico’s supporters credit him with everything from
bolstering the local economy to saving lives. Carleston Acres, 19, says that if it weren’t
for Rico’s parties there might be more violence in Springfield. “Me and my friends, if we’re not at a
Rico party we meet up at [Southeast High School’s] parking lot and
play our music real loud. We make our own party and it’s free. At
least at his parties it’s in a building, there’s security,
everyone is safe,” Acres says. Acres, like most people who attend the parties, has
been to nearly all of them. Erica Hill has missed just one, when she had
the flu, and even then she tried to go before her mom put the kibosh on her
plans. It just goes to show, Hill says, that “his
parties are such a big deal because there’s nothing to do except for
City Tournament or the [Illinois State] fair. You get to see people you
don’t see often, people who go to different schools. There’ve
been times when people have talked about taking limos.”
Down the road, Rico says he might like to work as an
event planner or even open a nightclub. His dream job, he says, would be to
host the BET show 106th and Park — but that would mean he could no longer do the
Springfield party thing. His fans question the idea of life in Springfield
without Rico parties. Major Clay, a former track standout at Lanphier High
School who attends college in Indiana, says that if Rico stops what
he’s doing, life for local teenagers would be
“miserable.”
Jessica Ollie, who attends UIS, sums up how important
Rico’s trademark events have become for members of her generation in
Springfield: “They’re really fun. There’s always
a lot of people there; there’s good music; it’s just a good
place to be,” she says. “Even the parents know Rico. Everybody
knows he’s the one that throws the parties. It’s a major event.
It’s become a tradition.”
Contact R.L. Nave at rnave@illinoistimes.com.
This article appears in Jun 19-25, 2008.
