School Gyrls

In November 2008 School Gyrls came together, nearly a year after vocalist Mandy Moseley first met Nick Cannon on the set of Nickelodeon’s Star Camp. Cannon, struck by Moseley’s vocal and dance skills, began forming a teen pop trio once the production ended and completed the lineup by adding Monica Anne Parales and Jacque Rae Pyles. The members adopted stage names for the project—Moseley as “Mandy Rain,” Parales as “Mo’Money,” and Pyles as “Jacque Nimble”—and introduced themselves in January 2009 with an appearance on the E! series Party Monsters Cabo. The group spent the rest of 2009 recording a debut album before returning to television in 2010 as the focus of a feature-length film that Cannon had scripted for Nickelodeon. Justin Bieber, the teen heartthrob, also appeared in the movie, which premiered in February, thirty days before School Gyrls released their self-titled debut album.