Every Little Step Page 6

  “What’s up, Teddy?” I said, genuinely pleased to see him.

  “What’s up, Bobby?” he said.

  “Dude, we need to get together, do some songs,” I said.

  “Man, that would be great. I would love that,” he responded.

  So that’s how I wound up messing around in his little studio in his apartment in Harlem, where he grew up. I took out my cassettes and played him a few grooves I had been working on. We were just brainstorming, throwing stuff out there and vibing off each other. He put down a pounding drumbeat and I immediately thought of this groove that had been bouncing around in my head for months. It haunted me; I would play with it every time I got on a keyboard. So when I heard Teddy’s drumbeat, I got on his keyboard and I played it for him. Da dadadadum. Teddy loved it. That became the unmistakable, addictive hook for “My Prerogative,” which many consider my signature song—and the song that announced the arrival of a pounding, rhythmic, hip-hop-inspired approach to R & B that came to be called new jack swing. With “My Prerogative,” I was definitely trying to make a statement about leaving New Edition and being on my own. I could do what I wanted, play what I wanted, spend my money where I wanted. Because of a contract dispute he was embroiled in at the time, Riley isn’t listed as a writer and producer on the credits of “My Prerogative.” He just got credited with mixing, but his influence is all over that record.

  When Don’t Be Cruel came out, it was like a bomb exploded on the American music scene—and in my life. I don’t think I was fully ready for it. I was in awe of the success of that album. We stayed out on the road almost three years touring on that record, traveling across the globe. The first single was “Don’t Be Cruel,” and I rapped at one point in the song, so the radio wouldn’t play it. This was 1988 and there were still many pop radio stations that considered rap some kind of scary black thing. So we took out the rap interlude so that we could get pop radio play. But then a funny thing happened—MTV started playing the video, featuring my rap. After that, the pop stations started playing the original version of the song, with my rap included. MTV set the standard.

  We recorded forty songs and picked the best twelve. Nine of the cuts wound up going out as singles, nearly the whole album. I became the first teenager since Stevie Wonder to hit number one on the Billboard chart, topping both the pop and R & B charts. Don’t Be Cruel wound up as the top-selling album of 1989, selling over five million copies in that year alone (and more than eight million total over the years). I won a Grammy in 1990 for Best Male R & B Vocal Performance.

  Along with my swagger and my music, I also introduced the world to my haircut, which came to be known as the Gumby. The haircut actually came about as an accident. I had a flattop at the time, and I was sitting in the chair of a famous barber in New York named Dinny Mo. Something happened and the razor slipped out of his hand. I think he actually said, “Oops.” But I saw it in the mirror and thought we might be onto something. I liked the way my hair swerved asymmetrically. I told him to give me some parts coming down here and over there. Then I wet my hair and put some gel on it. My hair is naturally curly, so that completed the look.

  “Yeah, this is gonna work,” I said when I looked in the mirror. I was feeling it.

  After I wore the style in the “Every Little Step” video, I started seeing it everywhere. To this day there’s a whole little society in Japan called the Bobby O’s, thousands of kids who follow everything related to Bobby Brown. They cut their hair like me and even dye their skin. It’s been more than twenty years and the Bobby O’s are still going strong.

  A FEW WORDS FROM KENNETH “BABYFACE” EDMONDS

  The creation of Bobby’s Don’t Be Cruel album was like the forming of a perfect storm. In the late eighties, LA Reid and I were out in Los Angeles, trying to sell records as the Deele and also trying to establish ourselves as writers for other artists. During a meeting we had at Universal, they mentioned that we might want to meet with an artist named Pebbles [who eventually became LA’s wife], and they also mentioned Bobby Brown. At the time Bobby had that song out, “Girlfriend,” and of course we remembered him from New Edition, but we didn’t exactly jump on it.

  We left the meeting and got in our car to drive back to our apartment on Highland. As we were driving, Bobby Brown came on the radio. He happened to be on a radio show where he would do a live performance. He was singing his song “Girlfriend” and at some point he went for a note he couldn’t reach. Bobby got mad and he said, “I don’t want to sing this song anyway.” We were shocked. We said, “Can you believe he did that?” That changed everything for us. That told us this guy was crazy. We loved his crazy energy; he just didn’t care. We loved who he was. Right then we knew, This guy is a star. That made the decision easy for us. We wanted to work with him.

  When we finally got with Bobby, I don’t know that he was that crazy about working with us, to be honest. He fought us on a couple of things. He fought us on “Don’t Be Cruel.” He didn’t necessarily think it was a good song. He fought us on the vocals. He was trying to sing and we were trying to keep him simple. When we put all the songs together, we did the best we could. But nobody knew Bobby was going to blow up.

  We thought we did a good job. We knew it was unlike anything that had been out before. There were no songs like “Don’t Be Cruel.” It was unique; nothing that followed “Don’t Be Cruel” has sounded like it. The whole structure of it was kind of different, the whole choral thing in the beginning. When Elvis did “Don’t Be Cruel,” we liked the words, and we wanted Bobby to have that kind of energy.

  When the record came out, there was a moment that we knew it was really happening. Bobby was on tour with Al B. Sure and New Edition. We went to see the show, somewhere in North or South Carolina. Bobby started that tour opening up the show. He had already performed when we got there; a lot of people didn’t see him. Al B. Sure was on the stage at the time. We visited Bobby backstage. We had seen that “Don’t Be Cruel” was going into the top ten and would maybe even be a number one record. That was great. But what happened at that concert was more significant. We walked to the side of the stage with Bobby. The people who saw Bobby on the side of the stage just lost it. While Al B. Sure was onstage. Al was hotter than you could get at that point, but Bobby standing on the side of the stage caused such pandemonium that we were like, “Oh shit, this is crazy. He’s getting ready to blow.” It was based on the song that was playing on the radio. It had already started.

  We saw his energy in the video, we knew he brought something to the table as a performer. There was no question. But when he stood on the side of that stage without doing anything and they loved him, that told us something. It was maybe two months later that they changed the tour. Suddenly Bobby was closing the show. It happened that fast. I don’t know of any situation I can think of where someone started out a tour as the opening act and in that short period was headlining.

  It’s not that Bobby has ever been a great singer. Bobby has been a great entertainer. Some people were just born to entertain. In my opinion, to this day there has not been another Bobby Brown. There are people who can dance, people who can sing, but when you look at Bobby Brown in his prime, the way he worked the stage, his entire persona, it’s hard to touch that. The only thing close that I’ve seen, people who have a persona like that, you have to go back to James Brown and how he commanded the stage. You have to go to Prince, how he commanded a stage. Or Michael. Bobby Brown commanded a stage in that way. That was the magic of Bobby. And add to it his being a bad boy. Singing those love songs, the way he brought an edge to it. That just worked. He was the original bad boy of R & B.

  The Bad Boy Is Born

  There was an undeniable sexual energy I brought to the stage, even as a teenager. It became clear to me very early on that whatever I was doing had a serious effect on the ladies. Everywhere I went, I was swimming in a sea of beautiful faces. They couldn’t get enough of me—and the feeling was very mutual.

  Hollywo
od stars, starlets, singers, dancers, groupies, regular girls, church girls—I screwed them all. I was with some of the most beautiful women in the world. Just imagine: The year I had the number one album in the country, 1989, I was only twenty—a twenty-year-old who suddenly had millions in the bank and women climbing all over him. A twenty-year-old who just a few years earlier had thought he was too dark and ugly.

  To put it mildly, I went buck fuckin’ wild. My thinking was, get as much as you can while you can.

  I remember one particular week when I happened to be in LA and one of my friends was dating a woman who danced with Madonna. Madonna told her friend to have me come to the studio, where she was working on an album. In 1989 she was at the height of her powers—and her sexiness. Like a Prayer had just been released and it seemed like everybody was talking about her and her knack for pushing the sexual envelope.

  As soon as I got to the studio, we were introduced. Before I knew it we were in the bathroom. We got together a few more times, but I wasn’t interested in dating her—she was just too wild, even for me.

  A FEW WORDS FROM MARVIN “MARVELOUS” MCINTYRE

  Growing up in Roxbury, I was a good friend of Tommy Brown, Bobby’s older brother. Bobby was just a nappy-headed little five-year-old when I met him for the first time. As he got older, Bobby used to tell me, “Marvelous”—which is my nickname—“when I get on, you need to roll with me. You’re the smartest kid I know from the hood, so I want you around me.”

  I wasn’t sure if I should feel complimented—after all, I wanted to be the smartest kid he knew, period. Not the smartest from the hood. But I always remembered what he told me. So in 1988, I was working in corporate America in Atlanta when Bobby called me. I was twenty-six and had graduated from college in New Hampshire. He was about to go on the Heart Break tour with New Edition and Al B. Sure and he said, “Marvin, I want you to come with me.” He had recorded the Don’t Be Cruel album and they had just released the singles “Don’t Be Cruel” and “My Prerogative,” which were starting to blow up.

  I told him, “If I’m going to do this with you, I’m not doing it for the money—I’m doing it for the challenge and the experience.” So that was my introduction to the music business. Almost thirty years later, I’ve never looked back.

  When we went out on the Don’t Be Cruel tour, I was the tour manager. Between 1988 and 1992, Bobby Brown was arguably the biggest artist on the planet minus Michael Jackson. It was amazing to watch. It was also hard to comprehend because I was seeing it and living it at the same time. Everywhere he went, he was a one-man PR firm, a one-man show. People of all nationalities around the world knew who Bobby was. It was truly an exceptional thing.

  When we went to Japan, there was an enormous audience of Japanese people who didn’t speak a word of English, but they all were reciting every word to “My Prerogative” and “Don’t Be Cruel” and “Every Little Step.” When we were down in Columbus, Georgia, they had this lewd-act law on the books, saying you couldn’t gyrate on the stage. So being the bad boy that Bobby Brown is at the time, he’s going to do what he wants to do. So he went out on the stage and did what he does best. He got arrested. They took him to a holding cell and locked him up. But as he was leaving—and I will never forget this—the sheriff and the officers who had locked him up bring this kid down to the jail cell. When Bobby walked out they wanted him to take pictures with the kid. That’s when I knew this stuff ain’t fair—I mean, you’re going to lock this guy up for doing something, but then you want to do a photo op with him? Of course Bobby graciously obliged.

  As tour manager my responsibilities were everything from advancing the next city, advancing the next show, to making sure folks got paid and doing all the administrative and logistical things pertaining to Bobby’s moving around. It was exciting; it was challenging. I’ve always embraced the art of being behind the scenes and structuring and development.

  Overnight Bobby Brown became a name. When you said “Bobby,” you meant Brown. Bobby was so hot that a promoter in London wanted him so bad that he flew him back to America on British Airways’ Concorde so that he could meet a show obligation. At the time the Concorde was the fastest passenger jet in the world. I’m from Roxbury, Massachusetts, and here I am flying on the Concorde. I have so many amazing stories, amazing memories.

  What made Bobby so successful was that New Edition was straitlaced: dress right, choreography, image, trim haircuts. Then this offspring of New Edition comes out with saggy baggy pants, the Gumby haircut, cussing, gyrating, doing all the things that don’t represent the New Edition brand. The young girls of America looked at that and said, Ooooh, he’s giving me this? I want more more more. Bobby Brown ignited the birth of the Ushers, the Chris Browns, the Trey Songz, the Ne-Yos.

  What I always used to love about Bobby was his work ethic. He was such a hard worker that it was clear why he was so good onstage. This is something people might not expect to hear because of his reputation. But you don’t get to be that good by accident, without putting some work in. I would tell him, “Robert”—I never call him Bobby—“you make it look so easy, make it look so unrehearsed.” That’s a true test of a star: if you can make stuff look so easy, like you don’t have to rehearse it.

  PART III

  LOVING BOBBY BROWN

  CHAPTER 4

  GROWING UP

  I met Malika Williams through her sister, Mona, who had been dating Ralph Tresvant. Mona and Malika were from Los Angeles; Ralph and I started hanging out with them during one of New Edition’s trips to the West Coast. Malika was a beautiful, sweet girl. I was seventeen and she was about the same age. She didn’t even have a driver’s license yet. As a matter of fact, neither did I.

  Speaking of driver’s licenses, it was an incident on the road that drew us closer. It was also the first of many unpleasant encounters I would have on the road with the police, encounters so frequent they sometimes feel like they comprise the CliffsNotes version of my entire life.

  We were staying at the Franklin Plaza Suites in Hollywood, the hotel New Edition always stayed at when we were recording in LA. Her stepfather had this big-ass Lincoln that her sister had used to drive the two of them to the hotel. Malika and I decided to go get some food for everybody, so we got into the Lincoln and took off. As I said, neither one of us had a license, but I was convinced that I was a good driver so it wouldn’t be a problem. I was wrong.

  I was driving along on Sunset Boulevard when I heard sirens and saw a fire truck coming toward us on the opposite side of the street. But instead of pulling over, I kept driving. Unfortunately, there was a police car just ahead of us. As I passed them, they turned on their flashing lights. But I kept driving. Malika was beside me in the passenger seat, freaking out. I finally pulled the car over.

  When the officer walked up to the car, he learned that I did not have a license, but Malika was also not sure under what name the car was registered. I’m certain that in the officer’s mind we were two teenagers out for a joyride in a stolen car, and nothing we could say would convince him otherwise. Next thing I knew, we were in the back of a squad car in handcuffs. A very promising night with a beautiful girl had quickly turned into a nightmare.

  We were placed in holding cells at the police station. I was able to bail myself out, but they wouldn’t let me bail out Malika. Finally they let her go because they didn’t really have any charges against her. Eventually, she made her way back to the hotel. For some reason, the shared trauma of the experience brought us closer together. We had sex that night, without protection.

  A couple months later I was on the road somewhere with New Edition and I got a phone call from Malika.

  “Bobby, I’m pregnant,” she said.

  I let the words sink in. Right away I knew a couple of things: 1) I had no interest in trying to get her to get rid of the child; 2) I had to grow up real fast.

  When her sister called and told me Malika had gone into labor, I hopped on a plane as fast as I could. But she
had delivered Landon by the time I arrived in LA. Part of the reason I moved my family to the West Coast was so that I could be with Malika and the baby. I bought a big house in Tarzana and Malika and Landon moved in.

  Having Landon come into my life changed me in profound ways. With the knowledge that I had a son, I felt stronger, more invincible, like his presence in the world turned me into a superhero. I felt everything through him; he became my strength, my motivating force. It’s hard to explain but I felt the King of Stage album through him; I felt the Don’t Be Cruel album through him. He gave me the strength to walk away from New Edition and do my own thing. He was my strength to get away from the projects and not take the little crumbs New Edition was willing to accept. He was my strength to move out of Boston to California.

  As I look back now on my relationship with Malika, my overriding thought is that I was way too young to become a father. I was hardly ever there for them because I was doing so much touring. I was still messing around with girls in every tour stop. I never slowed down for a minute, not even with a girlfriend and a baby back home. I’m a bit ashamed now by how I acted, how I treated her. She was extremely understanding, and I was an asshole. But at the same time, I never hid from her what was going on. I never pretended we were now in an exclusive, monogamous relationship just because we had a child.