Marques Barrett Houston was born August 4, 1980 Los Angeles, Ca. to the parents of Caroline and Michael Houston.
At the age of 12, Chris Stokes, who wanted to create a new boy group, discovered him. The original Immature group consisted of Marques "Batman" Houston, Jerome "Romeo" Jones and "Half Pint". They released the album "On Our Worst Behavior" under the Virgin Records label. They dressed in ultra baggy clothing and big hats. They appeared on the NBC series "A Different World" (1987-93) as students in Whitley's class. Next came House Party 3 as cousins of Christopher "Kid" Reid. Chris Stokes was at a breaking point with the group. One their album wasn't selling and young Half Pint wanted a solo career. Chris decided to let Half Pint go and start his solo career (which has yet to start after 10 years) and promote one of the band members to the front.
The new version of Immature with Kelton "Little Drummer Boy" Kessee had a new marketing strategy was created for the group. The first song from the new Immature was "Never Lie" from the second album "Playtime is Over". The song dominated the airwaves and began a string of hit songs. "Constantly" was the second hit from the album, which could have had as many as four hits songs.
Batman was soon cast in the animated movie "Bebe Kids" featuring the late Robin Harris and a regular on the ABC/WB series "Sister, Sister" (1992-99) as Roger. Roger was the annoying neighbor of the Mowery twins on the series. Roger was one of many rip-off characters of Steve Urkel (Family Matters) that networks created to cash in on the annoying or geeky character on a show.
Meanwhile Immature performed a song called "Feel the Funk" on the Dangerous Minds soundtrack. That was followed by "Do my Thang" on the All That soundtrack. "We Got It" was the third album to be released and proved to be a bigger hit than expected. It featured the classic song "Please Don't Go" and "We Got It"
From 1994 to 1997 Immature graced more magazines via interviews, photos and quick notes than any other group at the time. Collector issues were made that featured never before seen photos and interviews. See below for a listing.
Tv appearances included "Family Matters" (1989-98), Sister, Sister (1992-99), Soul Train, All That and other shows.
The group even had prodigies that came and sadly went away some cases. Monteco was the first with the song Is It Me? featuring Immature. He released his only album "Soul School", a great listen by the way, and vanished. Plano, Texas's Quindon Tarver was next and produced the single It's You that's on My Mind and his self titled album. Aside from a cameo in Romeo and Juliet and two songs on the soundtrack in 1996, Quindon has vanished. Tilt was another group that never appeared nor released their album. Tilt was supposed to be the first group that Immature produced for. A female group that opened for Immature was going to be the next big thing also vanished.
Batman soon had a personal problem happening with his family amidst the success of Immature. His mother was slowly dying of cancer. Not letting this life-changing event keep him down, he and Immature held a benefit concert the raised $25,000 for the care of his mother. Sadly in 1997 Caroline Houston lost her battle with cancer. The song "All Alone" on the Journey Album was written and dedicated to her by Batman.
A horror movie called The House of Miss Lilly Ann featuring Immature, Smooth and Quindon was planned however it is unknown if it was ever filmed.
With the release of "The Journey" album came the winds of change for the group. Batman was leaving Sister, Sister for his own series. A running title for the show was "Keepin it Real" and was captioned as the urban Brady Bunch. Batman's character lived with his father and two "brothers" played by the other members of Immature. The father got remarried to a woman with three daughters of her own.
A pilot was filmed, but the series was never given a green light. This was the begin of the end of Immature. Despite beginning a great listen-"The Journey" was ignored by most of the media. Radio stations (especially ones in Dallas, Texas) stopped playing Immature's music and magazines slowly stopped featuring them.
What happen? There comes a time where a successful group (or artist) will be widely accepted by the mainstream media (white media) and the black media can't stand it. Remember the group stayed out trouble with the law and were not involved in any feuds with other groups. With that being the case radio stations tuned them out. This has happened to Will Smith, Tevin Campbell, 3T, Coolio, Shanice and Boys 2 Men. It's not the fault of the artist for handling their business and not getting caught up in any drama like certain other artist.
Batman soon left the cast of "Sister, Sister" and started working on a Halloween movie that would feature Immature, Smooth and Quindon. It is still was called The House of Miss Lilly Ann. Hopefully it will pop up somewhere in the future.
In 1998 rumors floated around that Immature was dead and no longer a group. This was not true as the group decided to change their name. One prose name was Im' mature. The final result was IMX and the group returned to the world. They dropped the album "Introducing IMX" and return to great reviews. Despite not getting the airplay that they deserved due to lesser talented individuals clogging the airwaves.
2000 bought the wishes of IMX fans true. IMX was in a movie. House Party 4 was introduced on the USA Network. It was written by Chris Stokes and is highly sought after by fans. It is now available on video & DVD from Amazon.com and other stores. Batman kept his word about going by his stage name if the movie featured IMX. Otherwise he would go by Marques Houston.
IMX has returned with the second album under the IMX name. It featured the hit song First Time and the song Ain't No Need from the delayed and later box office failure Pluto Nash featuring Eddie Murphy.
Along with their second album, they began working with a new group called b2K. IMX took them under their wing and helped them released their self-titled album.
With the introduction of B2K, we discovered that one of the members-Omarion Grandberry was the (half) brother to Batman. They both have the same father. He is also the cousin to Jarrell Houston alias J-Boog. They are cousins by married rather than blood.
In 2003 with Romeo and LDB interested in producing, Batman decided to release his own album in March with the hit song That Girl. He also was featured in The Official IMX Spotlight Series magazine in January 2003.
He first performed solo on Dick Clark's New Years Eve's Special in 2002. He admits that he was nervous and after workings with headsets for the song, t was changed to handheld microphones.
He is even doing another movie called Crazy House. While that movie was going through development, he and B2K started working on the movie-You Got Served. Which can best be described as the make version of Bring It On. Instead of cheer leading it's all about dancing.
He & B2K appeared on NBC's
American Dreams performing The Temptation's "My Girl song. It also appears on the American Dreams Soundtrack Cd.
He has a new album called MH featuring the song "Clubbin" written by R. Kelly (Noted Child Porn owner). The song was added to replace the hit song "My Girl" that was meant to be apart of his first album under his old label. Instead it will be included under Marques's new label. Another song "Pop That Booty" was considered for single release, however it was held back. However both versions of his cd were released featuring the original version of the CD and the final version.
He had a staring role in the Chris Strokes written filmed -
You Got Served. It was meant to be a jumping off point for B2K, until Chris Stokes broke them up. He played David and it was about two guys that danced in underground dance battles for money. They break up before a MTV dance contest was created for a group to be in Lil Kim's new video.
He also appeared in the dance instructional DVD called
You Got Served: Takin It to The Street.
UPN opted him to be in One on One's spinoff pilot-
Cuts with Shannon Elizabeth. He played Kevin, Flex's brother that returned to town to takeover the family barber shop business. It aired as a two part episode on One on One. It was not picked up for the 2004-05 fall season. However it was picked up as a mid season show after the failure of Second Time Around.
He got the role of Dumb Donald in the movie version of
Fat Albert. He started filming the movie
Somebody Help Me, which is set to be released in 2007.
He released his second (or third counting the original version of MH)solo album called Naked on May 24, 2005. He finished up the final season of Cuts in May. He started work on his third (or fourth) cd called Veteran, which was released in November.
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