Key Points
- Pretty Ricky beat B2K in every round of their June 25 Verzuz battle
- The fan vote finished 89 percent to 11 percent overall
- Trick Daddy introduced Pretty Ricky; Affion Crockett introduced B2K
- Pleasure P pushed Omarion to sing live without backing tracks; Lizzo joined B2K's set
The mid-2000s R&B boy-band era got its head-to-head, and it was a rout. Pretty Ricky beat B2K in every round of their Verzuz battle on June 25, finishing 89 percent to 11 percent on overall fan voting, with no round dipping below 60 percent. Trick Daddy introduced the Miami group; Affion Crockett brought out B2K.
Watch the full battle — the Verzuz live stream is on Apple Music:
How it played out
The night leaned on the catalogs that made both groups 106 & Park fixtures — B2K's "Bump, Bump, Bump" and "Uh Huh" against Pretty Ricky's "Grind With Me" and "On the Hotline." Pleasure P challenged Omarion to sing without a backing track, which he eventually did, and Lizzo turned up to join a B2K number. Pretty Ricky paid tribute to late producer Static Major during "Make It Like It Was." The crowd, by every account, had a good time regardless of the lopsided tally.
Catch up on both catalogs with Apple Music's official matchup playlist:
The nostalgia economy
Verzuz long ago stopped being a pandemic novelty and became a catalog-reactivation machine: a single night that sends twenty-year-old songs back up the streaming charts and reminds a generation which acts still command a stage. That's the real prize here, bigger than a vote count. The 89-11 margin is less a verdict on who had the better run than on who showed up to perform — Pretty Ricky treated it as a concert, and in a format built on live nostalgia, that is the whole game. It's the same engine driving every legacy-act victory lap, from Jay-Z's Reasonable Doubt anniversary to the long-awaited returns of artists like A$AP Rocky: the audience is paying for memory, and the catalog is the asset.
Source: HotNewHipHop, Complex
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