“God spared my life. I need that in writing,” local producer Orlando “Pretty Boy” Watson said.
He was describing his battle with lymphoma, a deadly form of cancer that originates in the lymphatic system.
He has been fighting the cancer for a year and a half. Even his business partner and soul brother Bradd Young was hearing many details of that battle for the first time last week.
A deeply private man, Watson decided to tell his story to cut off speculation about his health. Many people on the scene have started to wonder what happened to Pretty Boy.
Here is what happened to Pretty Boy.
In July 2006, he and Bradd were in Los Angeles producing a record for Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. The fast-rapping crew from Cleveland had a new deal with Interscope Records. Pretty Boy and Bradd have close ties with Interscope A&R exec Shawn “Tubby” Holiday, who kicks them a lot of work.
Over endless hours in the studio, Pretty’s Boy knee began to act up. Thinking it was a high school football injury come back to haunt him, he went to the emergency room. The doctors didn’t find anything.
Back home in St. Louis in August, the pain in his knee became unbearable. Again, the doctors did X-rays and found no explanation for the pain.
Acting on the advice of a friend, he returned to the hospital in September and demanded an MRI test. Magnetic resonance imaging uses magnetic fields to take much more detailed pictures of the inner body, especially soft tissue, than X-rays provide.
The MRI turned up a tumor in his knee. After a biopsy – “that’s when they poke a hole in the tumor and pull some tissue out” – lymphoma was diagnosed. The doctor recommended surgery to remove the tumor and radiation to attack the cancer.
“But I don’t care too much for conventional medicine,” Pretty Boy said.
In fact, he has remained under the care of physicians and even purchased private health insurance – after shelling out more than $25,000 for exams and treatments (“me and Bradd had checks coming in, thank God”). He also consulted with his cousin, Christina Hackett, a student of alternative medicine who pointed him toward herbal remedies and other more controversial therapies, including a visit to Hulda Clark’s clinic in Tijuana, Mexico.
Clark’s work on cancer and HIV has been rejected as fraudulent by both the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Swiss Study Group for Complementary and Alternative Methods in Cancer.
Whatever the source of his strength and healing – and Pretty Boy insists the credit is due, ultimately, to God – he has not lost his leg to amputation, as one doctor predicted, and he has remained healthier than all of his doctors expected.
That is a blessing, needless to say, for this married father of three – and for his business partner, Bradd Young, who has shouldered a little more of the burden of their work while Pretty Boy struggled with his health.
There has been plenty of work to do.
The production duo did an entire record for Tyra B. that included two Top 10 records, “Country Boyz” and “Still in Love.” Her new single “Given Me a Rush” on Warner Bros. is likely headed for Top 10 as well, and the album is due in March.
In addition to the two Bone Thugs-N-Harmony tracks, they also have produced records for Swizz Beatz, Kelly Rowland, Yolanda Adams, Teddy Riley, Shawty and local boy Jibbs, whose success owes a debt to Pretty Boy’s connections.
It’s a heady roster of credits, but these guys are already industry veterans. Bradd got his first label deal with Epic in 2003, when he basically squirmed away from being marketed as a sex symbol (“if I had gone along with that,” he said, “this whole conversation would be way different”) and Pretty Boy’s first deal with Atlantic for Fobu dates back to the distant past (in pop music terms) of 1995.
Suffice it to say, they know the deal – or, rather, deals.
“It’s not enough to just have good music,” Pretty Boy said. “Even when you are connected, you have to bust your butt just as hard.”
“Harder,” Bradd said. “The expectation level is raised higher. You have to leap up two levels up in order to stand out.”
Bradd is still intending to make that leap as an artist as well as producer. His record as a singer and musician (“he’s the Prince of St. Louis,” Pretty Boy describes him) is one of the many projects that keeps these guys grinding.
Pretty Boy said, “At some point, we’ll want to put it on cruise control and sit back. But we’re not at that point yet.”
“Not 1 percent,” Bradd said. “Not half of 1 percent!”
