Lead Singers Who Became Impossible To Deal With
If you were to ask a group of small children what they'd like to be when they grow up, many would probably say a famous singer. Think about it. How many of us have held entire concerts in our bedroom as kids while belting out our favorite tunes in a comb or hairbrush? For a small few, however, the dream of rock, rap, or pop stardom comes true, and they get to travel the world and experience fans mouthing lyrics that could've been written in their bedroom. Can anything be more gratifying to a singer or rapper who's been trying to get noticed for a long period?
But on the flip side, some of those artists experience all kinds of problems. Like, maybe they signed a bad contract and are stuck in a bad business arrangement. Or possibly their fan base has shrunken over the years because their hits have died down and the sound of popular music has changed. There are some singers and rappers, however, who have issues with their bandmates, and they were called impossible to deal with. Those are the artists we're focusing on for this go-around. So here are the singers and rappers who were accused of acting like complete divas.
Kiely Williams was accused of hurling chicken at someone
The first time many probably heard of Naturi Naughton was when she was in the singing group 3LW. She was able to carve out a successful acting career for herself after they disbanded, starring in series like "The Playboy Club," "Power," and "Queens." But during her 3LW days, Naughton felt like an outsider in the group, which also consisted of Adrienne Bailon and Kiely Williams. More specifically, Naughton said both women were impossible to deal with because they wanted her out of 3LW. The actor and singer also claimed that Williams once assaulted her with a plate of food inside a vehicle.
"Kiely and Adrienne are sitting in the middle aisle, and I was in the back by myself," said Naughton on TV One's "Uncensored" in 2019. "I said, 'I'm not the one who's trying to kick me out the group. Don't be mad that Wendy Williams [reported it] or that the news is out, 'cause it's true' ... She turned around, Kiely, threw the plate of food, mashed potatoes, chicken, whatever else was in there, in my face." Naughton said she got out of the vehicle after that, which drove off and left her standing there. At first, Williams denied the chicken claim but seemingly admitted to it in a 2021 tweet.
Tom DeLonge got called out by his bandmates
In 1999 the California pop punk band Blink-182 was riding high. They had a hit single with "All the Small Things" and were all over MTV. But as the band progressed, there was a beef among members, which led to a breakup and the trio reuniting. On one side of the infighting stood drummer Travis Barker and bassist Mark Hoppus; on the other, guitarist and singer Tom DeLonge.
Then things got really nasty between the men in 2015 when Barker and Hoppus said that DeLonge quit Blink and replaced him with Matt Skiba of the band Alkaline Trio. But DeLonge denied walking away from the band, something that Barker and Hoppus responded to in a Rolling Stone interview.
"It's hard to cover for someone who's disrespectful and ungrateful," said Barker, before bringing up his 2008 plane crash where four people died. "You don't even have the balls to call your bandmates and tell them you're not going to record or do anything Blink-related. You have your manager do it ... Everyone should know what the story is with him, and it's been years with it. When we did get back together after my plane crash, we only got back together; I don't know, maybe because I almost died. But he didn't even listen to mixes or masterings from that record. He didn't even care about it."
It was said that Nicole Scherzinger hogged the spotlight
Choreographer Robin Antin turned The Pussycat Dolls into a successful pop group after they were a burlesque act, which isn't seen in the music world every day. Right off the bat, the group scored a hit with "Don't Cha" in 2005, and other popular songs followed. Nicole Scherzinger, who first came to fame on the show "Popstars," stood front and center of The Pussycat Dolls and sang the most. In fact, she contributed lead vocals to 95 percent of the songs, according to what she said on "Behind the Music" in 2012.
"I'll never forget I finished the album 'PCD,' and Ron [Fair] brought the girls in the studio, and we played it for them. This is the first time they've ever heard the music," Scherzinger explained. It was a claim that Fair, who produced the album, backed up in that same episode, saying "The Masked Singer" judge sang just about everything.
Later, Pussycat Doll member Kaya Jones confirmed that Scherzinger did all of the heavy lifting in the studio but only because the other women weren't given a choice. "There was a lot more going on behind the scenes," Jones told TMZ in 2012. "Nicole was always someone who wanted to be in the spotlight and would do pretty much anything to get it ... To call the other girls in the Pussycat Dolls 'window dressings' is a bit farfetched ... Every girl in the group was talented."
Bizzy Bone was kicked out twice
The members of the rap group Bone Thugs-n-Harmony will probably say their group member Bizzy Bone was impossible to deal with. Why? Because they kicked him out of the group at least twice. One time was in 2002, when it was said that he showed up to a concert drunk. "You saw him, all drunk and passed out," group member Layzie Bone told The New York Times then. "He didn't even make it through the show."
But eventually, Bizzy was let back into the group but not for long because he was ousted the following year as well. It seemed that his bandmates felt he was focusing way too much on himself and not on Bone Thugs-n-Harmony. "We would like to clear this rumor up about Bizzy Bone," Layzie said during an MTV interview. "That cat made his own choices, his own decisions. He's no longer in our group ... Please believe we love him, but he's doing his thing. We doing Bone Thugs."
Bizzy joined the group yet again after that; however, that wasn't the last time he was accused of messing things up for Bone Thugs-n-Harmony. In 2021, they took on Memphis' rap group Three 6 Mafia in "Verzuz," a battle competition where acts play songs from their music catalog. During the event, tensions arose between the two groups, and Bizzy launched a water bottle at Three 6 Mafia. Swizz Beatz, Verzuz's co-founder, slammed Bone Thugs after that.
En Vogue's Terry Ellis and Cindy Herron-Bragg were called controlling
Reggae act UB40 has gone through it. So have the members of Pink Floyd and the Los Angeles rap group The Pharcyde. All of those acts have sued each other for the use of the band's name and En Vogue can also be added to that list. Things came to a head between En Vogue members Terry Ellis, Cindy Herron–Bragg, and Maxine Jones in 2012. By then, fourth member Dawn Robinson had left the group and joined the band, Lucy Pearl. A disagreement broke out between En Vogue's remaining members after that. Simply put, Jones wanted her own manager, while Herron–Bragg and Ellis wanted someone they were comfortable with to manage the group.
So, Jones refused to show up to gigs and was eventually kicked out of the trio. She then partnered up with Robinson to form En Vogue, and the other two women did the same after hiring another singer. Herron-Bragg and Ellis then sued Jones, who blasted them, while calling her ex-bandmates controlling. "Yup, Terry n Cindy r evil! They took over the LLC n bank acct, forced me out, gave my gigs 2 that chick LOL, and SUING #ME!" tweeted Jones in a since-deleted post in 2012, which has since been deleted. The ladies reunited in 2019, but it didn't last. As of 2023, En Vogue consists of Ellis, Herron, and Rhona Bennett, who joined the group in 2003.
Ozzy Osbourne received his walking papers
It was a combination of substance abuse, refusing to sing, and pulling disappearing acts that got Ozzy Osbourne kicked out of Black Sabbath. After the band's 1978 album "Never Say Die!" was received poorly by critics, they rented a house in Los Angeles to work on another LP. But once things got underway, Osbourne would vanish for long periods of time. Tony Iommi, the band's guitarist, gave details about terminating the singer in the book "Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal," saying that Osbourne was busy clubbing all night instead of working.
But even before the LA house was rented, the band had trouble getting Osbourne to sing because he lacked confidence after the bad reviews of "Never Say Die!" came out. And that made him abuse drugs and alcohol even more. It's been said that Iommi is the one who wanted Osbourne gone, but as he wrote in his book "Iron Man," he was just the vocal one in the band.
Still, though, it's not like Iommi or the other band members were sober, which Osbourne took issue with after being fired. "Firing me for being f***ed up was hypocritical bulls**t," he wrote in his book "I Am Ozzy," which was shared by Loudwire. "We were all f***ed up. If you're stoned, and I'm stoned, and you're telling me that I'm fired because I'm stoned, how can that be? Because I'm slightly more stoned than you are?"
Salt-N-Pepa got sued by their DJ
Unlike some of the others on this list, Cheryl "Salt" James and Sandra "Pepa" Denton of the rap group Salt-N-Pepa, weren't accused of not showing up to work or hurling a piece of chicken at anyone. But based on what their former bandmate Deidra "Spinderella" Roper said, they failed to pay her hundreds of thousands of dollars.
As TMZ details, Roper said she was promised one-third of the royalties from a Salt-N-Pepa greatest hits album. The veteran DJ also said she was supposed to receive 125,000 for the project and didn't get that either. Nor was she properly compensated for being on a VH1 show about the group. Add to that, Roper claimed that her ex-bandmates were paid over $600,000 in royalties over the last 10 years, and she didn't receive any of those profits.
So she filed a lawsuit against James and Denton in 2019, which they responded to, and they accused her of running a smear campaign against them. But In the end, a settlement was reached between the group, but it didn't heal all of Roper's wounds. "It's always what it's been: to uplift women," she told Billboard in 2021. "How does that make me feel, that you make me feel that I'm not needed ... That's not uplifting."
Axl Rose suddenly changed
Before Guns N' Roses' hired Slash as their guitarist, the position was held by Tracii Guns, who went on to start his own band L.A. Guns. He left Guns N' Roses prior to their huge success because of lead singer Axl Rose, who Guns said became impossible to deal with all of a sudden. He spoke about quitting the band during an interview with SiriusXM, saying Rose became an angry dictator. "Me and Izzy [Stradlin] were just looking at each other from across the stage like, 'This is weird,'" he said, according to Alternative Nation. "All of a sudden, we weren't connected to Axl. You know, like he had taken over his space and was really talking a lot, and we weren't playing a lot."
Plus, Guns told Ultimate Guitar in 2017 that being in Guns N' Roses wasn't fun anymore due to Rose's behavior. "I was 19 when I left, and it was a very long time ago," Guns recalled. "At the time, Axl was kind of going through something because I had never seen him angry. I'd seen him get angry, where someone confronts us and we're about to fight with somebody, but between him and I, we had a really great, best friendship."
David Ruffin didn't deal well with success
David Ruffin didn't start out as the Temptations' lead singer. He began singing with a group called the Voice Masters at first. Then after Elbridge "Al" Bryant was fired from The Temptations for striking a group member with a bottle, he was out, and Ruffin was in. But it wasn't until the success of the song "My Girl" that Ruffin got more lead singing opportunities since it gave the Temptations their first number-one hit.
From there, Ruffin sang lead on other big songs like "Since I Lost My Baby," "Beauty Is Only Skin Deep," and "Ain't Too Proud To Beg." But he was accused of letting the success go to his head. Couple that with a drug problem he had and the group eventually had enough. On top of that, Ruffin demanded special treatment in the group and wanted to change the name from the Temptations to David Ruffin & the Temptations. Can you imagine the looks on group members' faces when he made that request?
Ruffin was fired by the group in 1968 and released his solo debut the following year. He got back with the Temptations in 1983 for a tour, but it didn't go well, as he was accused of missing shows. Sadly, Ruffin died on June 1, 1991, in Philadelphia at 50 years old from a cocaine overdose.
Noah Weiland went through the same thing as his father
Unfortunately for Noah Weiland, he experienced the same thing that his late father Scott Weiland did. Both of them were kicked out of their band, seeing the Stone Temple Pilots fired Scott in 2013, two years before he died of a drug and alcohol overdose. As for Noah, he joined a group called Suspect208 that consisted of Tye Trujillo, who's the son of Metallica's Rob Trujillo, London Hudson, who's Slash's son, and Niko Tsangaris. But in 2021, it was reported that Suspect208 fired Noah for substance abuse.
"Noah was not writing lyrics or lifting his weight in the band for two months before we let him go," the band said in a statement. "He was heading down a dark path of drug use that got in the way of our friendship as well as the band. Lastly, there were many instances of blow-ups over very small issues we'd confront him with. We wish him the best, and we deeply care about him. However, we did as much as we could to help him. Thank you to those who stick with us on this journey; we are very grateful."
But Suspect208 didn't stay together very long after firing Noah. They disbanded that same year, and Noah released some solo material.