Mindless Behavior - Back on the Tour Bus

When a group is personally chosen by Janet Jackson to be her sole supporting act for 12 dates of her Number Ones: Up Close & Personal tour, which hits Mohegan Sun on March 16th, it’s a pretty big deal. For the four 13 year old young men of Mindless Behavior (think B2K: The Next Generation), it’s the latest in a string of big deals they’ve experienced over the past two years. According to Princeton, Roc Royal, Prodigy and Ray Ray, the excitement never gets old.

“We get excited for everything,” Princeton says, “we get excited to show one person, or two people, or three people what we got.” For this tour there’s another group that’s equally as excited - Mindless Behavior’s parents. “Our parents were really excited (to hear the news) because they were huge Janet Jackson fans.”

Having already shared stages with Justin Bieber, the Backstreet Boys, and Jason Derulo, the latter being their first UK tour, as well as having done their own tour of malls and schools across North America, the quartet are already veterans of the road. This doesn’t mean they don’t get butterflies before performances, though.

“We always get nervous before a show,” Princeton explains, adding those butterflies lead to adrenaline. “The minute the lights turn off, and the crowd screams... that’s the best part of the show to me.”

In addition to being veterans of the road, Princeton is also a veteran of music videos - he was the cupid in Gym Class Heroes’ “Cupid’s Chokehold.” Now he and the rest of Mindless Behavior have their own videos, and the clip for their single “My Girl” has racked up more than five million views on YouTube. The foursome have a remix on the way featuring Ciara, Lil’ Twist and Tyga, and they also just filmed a guest appearance for the Disney Channel show Sonny with a Chance that’s scheduled to air later this month.

Clearly Janet Jackson isn’t the only one digging Mindless Behavior.

The foursome actually have quite the impressive support system. The team at Conjunction Productions, along with Streamline Records head Vincent Herbert, who is credited with discovering Lady Gaga and executive produces all of her music, came up with the concept for Mindless Behavior in 2008. Princeton and Roc Royal met at an audition hosted by Conjunction. Their choreographer then found Prodigy on YouTube, and Ray Ray auditioned for, and joined, the group a few weeks after that. Mindless Behavior then spent two years developing as artists before Herbert introduced them to IGA Chairman Jimmy Iovine, who immediately signed them.

Right now the young men of Mindless Behavior are thinking about a development of another kind - putting the finishing touches on their act for the Janet Jackson tour.

“I’m really excited for this tour,” Princeton says, “we have a new intro and we’re excited for all the fans to hear it. It’s really cool, but I’m really nervous because it’s big crowds and a big icon to look up to.”

Princeton just needs to wait for the lights dim, and the crowd to start to scream.

Story originally ran in the HartfordAdvocate.