Fact is, it’s been a while since Ralph Edward Tresvant, Jr. was just Ralph. For the past ten years – eight professionally and two at the amateur level on the local circuit in Boston – he’s been Ralph Tresvant of New Edition.
“Born premature at eight months, very easily with only one hour of labor” is the way Mrs. Pat describes the birth of Ralph. She named her first born after his father, whom she met in high school.
“Wild” is the way LaTonya describes her brother as a youngster. “Ralph stayed in fights,” she recalls as her mother nods in agreement. “Everybody liked to pick on Ralph because he was the smallest when we stayed in the projects. I use to yell at him a lot. I’d look around for him after all of the other kids would be at home. It seemed like he was always the last one to come home. It would be after 9:30 P.M. and I would be so worried. He’d be out on the highway beating cans for jimmy-funds. “ “The money was for little league baseball,” LaTonya informs.
Coming from a family of French and Indian descent explains Ralph’s keen features. His maternal “great-grandfather was a white guy” says Mom. “Our last name is French and the proper pronunciation of it is Tre’-Vaunt (It rhymes with aunt and the letter S is silent).”
On May 16th of this year, Ralph turns 21. Mom says he started walking at nine months, tried to say Mama and Dada at seven or eight months but didn’t actually hold conversations until he was about one-and-a-half. And started paying attention to girls at 12.
When asked the one thing Ralph hates for her to tell, she smiles and looks at André and LaTonya. “He’s going to kill me for this, but we call him ‘Poopy’ (rhymes with Snoopy). He doesn’t like to be called ‘Poopy’ around his friends.”
As long as we are telling Ralph’s secrets, we thought you’d like to know his favorite home cooked meal: “Hog-maws! He loves ‘em. He can eat them as many times as you cook them,” Pat reveals. It wasn’t always easy to get him to eat his dinner; just like everyone else Ralph and LaTonya had their prankisk schemes for escaping the wrath of cleaning their plates. The most memorable for his mother was when they would hide the plates with food still on them under the stove for days.
André, who also answers to “M.C. ‘Dre,” has his share of fame’s woes just like the rest of his family. “They ask me stuff like, ‘What does he do’.” André bears an incredible resemblance to Ralph, who has written a rap tune for him. His favorite pastime spent with Ralph is when they play-fight and wrestle. The two also share an incredible video game collection. ‘Dre says he seriously wants to be a rap artist.
Contrary to what the average person may assume, Patricia, who ten years ago “was doing maid work in Boston, cleaning rooms, living in the projects, and raising my kids the best that I could,” insists that Ralph’s success hasn’t changed her. “I just go on normally,” she says. Meeting people like her favorites Patti LaBelle or Diana Ross, who along with the Supremes were the teen idols of her day is the only luxury of Ralph’s fame that she exercises. There is a picture of the two Patricias – Mrs. Tresvant and Mrs. LaBelle – on top of the television in the den of their home. Aside from gold and platinum albums, there are no signs inside the house that New Edition built.
The mothers of the other guys in the group do not communicate as often as they used to. Pat says that, “Mabel, Ricky’s mother and I are the closest. Some of us have disagreed on a lot of things. One thing we didn’t agree on at one time was management. One wanted to be with somebody else and one wanted to be with another and it ended up in a big mess. I have only met Johnny’s mother one time. The fact that we have all moved away has sort of separated us. We have had our ups and downs.” As far as Ralph being one of the main focal points of New Edition, that has never caused any problems with the other mothers or with the guys. “He is one of the reasons the other guys are doing leads,” Pat insists. “He felt like it was a lot of pressure on him. At one point there was talk of making it ‘New Edition featuring Ralph Tresvant’ and he turned it down flat.”
Two of Ralph’s favorite pastimes are “playing with his puppy Money and backgammon. His favorite color is red and he did his room in red and black. He doesn’t cook and he eats a lot of candy. One thing I don’t like about him is he grits his teeth. When he was a baby he’d do it in his sleep. You would hear them cracking. I caught him swearing once while he was playing marbles. I just happen to stick my head out of the window and he was saying, ‘Man, did you see what you did, s—t!’ He was about five. So I called out to him, ‘Ralph, come and get some cookies.’ When he got upstairs I started chasing him around the house with the broom handle. When he found out I hear him swear his eyes got as big as silver dollars.”
When asked to describe Ralph in one word she says “sentimental.” “He spoils his women,” LaTonya shares. Pat states that she and Ralph share “a very special and close mother and son relationship and aside from getting him up early every day and playing his music very loud.” They have no problems.
“There’s nothing about him I would change because he’s never been a problem child,” she insists. Aside from the uneasy feeling everyone gets when he’s about to leave for the road or the concern she has when he gets sick while out on tour, being Ralph Tresvant’s mother is no worry or problem at all. “He’s just Ralph!”
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