Thug Porn Takeover

Inner-city icon Tiger Tyson and a fistful of ghetto-sex studios from New York step into the mainstream on a hip-hop beat.

You think you’ve got your Ph.D. in being a freak? Well, guard your azz, America, because thug porn is creepin’ up on the family jewels. Led by a triumvirate of Big Apple indie studios—Latino Fan Club, Big City Video, and Pitbull Productions—as well as Tiger Tyson, the genre’s most recognized star, thug porn is right in step with what contemporary pop culture says is sexy: Blinged-out young black and Latino guys making deals and getting shit done—which in this case means pounding a fellow thug deep in the butt with an uncut cock and come-blasting 
his face.

Thug porn may have gay thugs (at least part-time), but they aren’t play thugs—these guys really do live in the ’hoods of Detroit, Miami, Atlanta, Philly, and especially New York. Thug videos allow viewers entry into a shadowy, sexy world where the ferocious players possess exceptionally mammoth, dark-skinned cocks and cool names like Phat Daddy, Troy Penetrator, Ass Professor, Volkalz, Da Bomb, Sho-Nuff, Haze, and Sexy Veteran. These are the “tough street types who are keeping it real,” explains thug-porn titan Tiger Tyson.

Soul and Hot Sex

Victor Hoff, publisher of the popular adult blog Men of Color, has written about “blatino” porn and posted thug links and photos daily since 2004. Hoff observes that “Baby Boomers, who were responsible for the [initial] success of the adult industry, are going away, and a new generation of producers are moving in to fill their ranks.” The result: an explosion of “niche porn.” According to Hoff, thug porn is a particularly hot niche because “anyone who likes men—adult, developed men who have a sense of their own sexuality—will be more than satisfied by what’s…delivered.”

Pitbull producer and CEO Jalin Fuentes coined the phrase “thug porn,” says Tyson, who’s been the popular face (and dick) of the urban trends since his 1997 debut in Enrique Cruz’s Brooklyn Tails (available from Arena Entertainment). This year Tyson won a GayVN award and was the trade magazine’s first coverthug, so he’s come a long way.

“In the black and Latino community being gay is not something you brag about—there’s a lot of pressure from your friends and relatives to stay in the closet—a lot of the guys are married or have at least fathered a child or two,” confesses Tyson, who recently told a West Hollywood audience that one of his many tattoos is for his daughter. “Having man-on-man sex is kept quiet and on the DL.”

“Thugs are what we used to call ‘street boys’ or ‘ruffnecks’—it’s nothing new,” declares Brian Brennan, CEO of Latino Fan Club, one of the first thug-porn studios. Brennan began videotaping young Puerto Rican guys from his Manhattan neighborhood with a consumer-grade camcorder over 20 years ago. “The media seems to encourage the public to try bisexuality, so many young men do just that.”

Originally an art director for a porn magazine, Brennan had an eye for the “Latin look” back in the ’80s and placed a small ad in Blueboy looking for members to join a new “Latino fan club.” “In 1985 no one was shooting porn with my favorite kind of men: young urban Latinos,” he recalls. “I lived around the corner from a Latin hustler bar in Manhattan, and I found my first models there. These young men hung out at the Phoenix—sometimes their girlfriends chilled with them, too—it was like their own social club, and the boyz were available. My first movie, San Juan Six Pack, was a collection of solos.”

Brennan’s “hanging with the tough guys,” cinema verité style has defined thug porn—it’s what makes the style so hot. “I limit shooting each scene to just the performers and myself on camera, so it can be as laid-back as possible,” he says. “The location set is lit and prepped beforehand, and the actors and myself are the only ones getting the scene made.”

Brennan offered the original Latino Fan Club members a newsletter and his homemade XXX videos, and got a quick response. “I began to build a specialized mailing list—and huge customer base—over the years.” Finally, he quit his day job to film fantastic foreskins full-time. “I started making story-line features like New York Street Boys and Boys of El Barrio, and the mail orders kept coming in,” he says, 200 movies later.

“When [Latino Fan Club] first started out it was a lot of self-conscious masturbatory stuff. But they’ve matured with the times, and they consistently feature models that reinforce their brand—they’re a huge success story,” says Hoff. Notable LFC titles include the best-selling, four-hour, double-cassette Spanish Harlem Knights 2 (1991), a “sentimental favorite” of Brennan’s, and More Spanish Lessons: Hard Study 1, a huge crossover hit thanks to star Tiger Tyson’s youthful good looks and enormous wang. As much as any other, the latter video also spawned the nascent thug-porn aesthetic. “To me it’s all about the attitude, the look, and how a guy on the street carries himself,” says Brennan.

Big (Dick) Business

“I love the macho behavior, I love their sensuality—they have a sexiness that drives me crazy,” gushes Big City Video president Robbie Glessman when asked to describe New York City pimps, players, and ruffians. “I hand business cards to guys on the street, on the subway, and in nightclubs. Sometimes they contact us, or a performer brings us one of his friends. Now we receive lots of X-rated photos via e-mail, too.” After 10 years in the porn biz, Glessman holds the distinction of producing the most black, Latin and blatino videos per year of any New York studio. “I was in the bar-and-restaurant business when I met director Ron Rico, and he asked me if I was interested in making porn,” he explains. “California porn was fine, but it was too white for me back then. I always had an interest in Latin boyz.” Glessman fell right in with the other New York thug-porn creators. “I love Tiger Tyson, we’ve been personal friends since before he did porn and ‘became’ Tiger Tyson. I’m very friendly with both Pitbull Productions and Latino Fan Club. We are the New York porn industry.”

Over the years Big City Video has discovered or promoted all the serious, big-baller thugs: Manuel Torres, Enrico Vega, Jason Tiya, Riccardo, Tiger Tyson, Viper, and, particularly, Supreme—whose light skin, jizz-gushing dong, and brooding, hard-thug looks in Big City videos like Latin Tiger made him an instant legend. Rico and Glessman even bought out a competitor, Latin Connection, increasing the Big City catalogue to over 130 titles. Says Glessman: “Everyone I know secretly says they never watch the plot, they just fast-forward till guys are having sex. So I decided Big City should just be sex.”

Big City’s Rican Reform School, a thug-porn precursor, was just that, and it still sells well today. But Glessman’s all-time favorite is current star Ricky Martinez, who leads the deliciously nasty and verbal orgy Let Them Eat Cock; he’s also worked for Mustang Studios, Unzipped Video, and other mainstream producers. “Without a doubt his face and dick have to be legend in the porn world,” the Big City honcho raves. “I love to see when the so-called big studios use my boys; it makes daddy proud. And they all come back to make more videos for me, so I guess I treated them right.”

Take the Bull by His Horn

“I’ve shot in Miami, Atlanta, New York—and you’ll see that while the locations and accents may change, the thug persona does not,” says Tiger Tyson. The onetime journeyman dick-slinger helped launch Pitbull Productions in 2003 and is now giving the established New York studios a run for their money. “Working for any company that you’re not financially invested in is frustrating after a while,” Tyson remarks. “Since my name and image were being used to sell the movies, I wanted to have more control over how I was being portrayed. I wanted to make movies that had good production values—movies I could be proud of.”

Tyson eloquently lays out Pitbull’s mission: Use only authentic thugs, pay the performers well, and practice safe sex. “We are a condom-only company,” says Tyson’s partner, Jalin Fuentes. “None of us will make bareback movies. We think unprotected sex can kill you!”

“I actually quit the business for a while until I met Jalin,” Tyson says of Pitbull’s 28-year-old CEO. “He and a backer started the company, and he is the producer for all Pitbull movies. I discovered we had the same vision about the adult business.” That shared vision has included a phenomenal 44 full-length DVDs released in the last four years.

Urban companies used to just be about quickie productions, but increased competition from Pitbull “has made them pay attention to quality and creativity,” one video distributor pointed out recently. A salesperson at a rival company agreed, claiming that thug-porn sales now make up 20 percent of its overall gay DVD sales—an enormous market share for what was previously thought of as a genre with limited appeal. It seems that in the 21st century one road to mainstream success leads directly out of the ghetto.

“Naturally, we have a lot of customers who are black, but we also have a lot who are white,” says Tyson. “When we use Latino actors we pick up the Latin customers as well. It’s a mixed audience and very, very loyal. Most of the fans own every DVD we’ve ever put out.”

Does anyone care that by reinforcing certain stereotypes about urban men, the producers might do a disservice to their communities? “Honestly, I’d say no,” says Men of Color’s Victor Hoff, who lists two non–New York thug-porn outfits, FlavaWorks and Dark Alley Media, as his favorites. “They’re capitalizing on a lifestyle, and the models don’t seem to be complaining.”

Gangsta ISO Bitch

For some producers, there’s more at stake than pimping their rides. “It’s not all about business—I’d rather enjoy the process of exploring what is erotic, working with talented and interesting people in front of and behind the camera,” says Brennan, whose latest opus, Rocky Ruiz (with Rocky Rivera), takes the voyeuristic thrill inherent in thug porn to sublime new heights. “Right now I want to develop more realistic stories with a social message included.” Followers of Brennan’s films can also get their own coffee-table book, Latino Fan Club (FotoFactory Press), with more than 108 images of LFC’s streetwise Puerto Rican boys.

Meanwhile, Pitbull Productions continues to flash its street sense by signing established stars like Supreme and by breaking in fresh faces. “Guys like Shooter, K.B., and Phat Daddy are getting a big following,” boasts Jalin Fuentes. Perhaps the company’s most exciting new star is Thugzilla, “Miami’s wildest thug,” who, in the provocatively rough-hewn Thugzilla’s Bitch Hunt, awakens one morning to find his bitch has gone. His reaction? A snarling “Aw, who gives a shit!” The black-clad, doo-ragged gangsta’s search across Miami for a new thug boy—one who has a job and a car (preferably a Mercedes C-Class)—is riveting. The dude even makes a conquered bottom bitch spell out t-h-u-g-z-i-l-l-a with his flexing butt lips aimed at the camera.

“The perfect performer is a guy who is both a narcissist and exhibitionist,” says Big City’s Glessman, who along with his partner is pushing deeper into the thug genre with the all-black Urban Blackout. “It doesn’t hurt if you have a huge uncut dick, too.”

Giant uncut gangsta pole was exactly the reason 80 people crammed into a recent bar appearance by Tiger Tyson in West Hollywood, Calif.—a remarkable welcome for this representative of a genre characterized by its isolation from the West Coast scene. The audience was a microcosm of thug-porn fanatics—equal proportions black, white, Mexican, Puerto Rican, male, female, young, old, upwardly mobile, and ghetto-fabulous.

“Listen,” Tiger drawled as he focused his gaze on a 40-something white man. “You can come up here, I ain’t gonna bite ya.” (The fan’s knees immediately buckled.) Tyson’s easygoing hustler charisma converted strangers into a cheering hometown crowd in seconds flat, and in the process illustrated the special connection thug porn has with its audience. “I might come on ya,” Tyson laughed, grabbing his monster cock. “But I ain’t gonna bite ya!”

Spoken like a true thug.

By Sean Carnage