Wesley Pipes went into porn straight out of prison. He’d served three years for trying to carjack someone with a loaded gun. It was the first car he ever got caught on, he says, and when prosecutors offered a plea deal he took it on the spot instead of risking 10 or 15 years at trial. Out on parole, he couldn’t find much work, and he needed money for studio time for his music. So he called Players, a Black magazine from the 90s, and told them he wanted to get into the industry. They sent him to World Modeling, and he shot his first scene that day. He insists it was never about the women. For him it was strictly a hustle.
He started before Viagra and Cialis existed. Asked whether there was ever a scene where he couldn’t perform, he answered that he once had sex on camera with a 76-year-old woman. He hates admitting it, but her name was Shirley Ann and it’s all on film. When the cameras roll, he’s ready to go.
Born Wesley Lawrence in Mississippi in 1969, he took his stage name from Wesley Snipes and got into porn in 1998. The Internet Adult Film Database lists him in more than a thousand films. He went into the Urban X Hall of Fame in 2009 and the AVN Hall of Fame in 2015, and that same year a director announced Pipes had inoperable cancer.
He went from an armed carjacking to more than a thousand films and a scene with a 76-year-old woman. Did porn save Wesley Pipes, or was it just a hustle that paid better?