Bobby Brown: no more kid stuff - profile

BOBBY BROWN

No More Kid Stuff

Don't look now, but little Bobby Brown is all grown up. He's living large and, as he himself says, it's his prerogative

I made this money, you didn't...

In concert, Bobby Brown bum-rushes the stage as if it were his own piece of the street. In his electric-blue silk suit, thick gold chain, crown-shaped medallion and black derby and carrying a thin leather attache case, he looks like a homeboy who just got paid. True, Brown is smooth, but he's no criminal. He's just a mod crooner-danceman making teenage girls and their mothers--and even their grandmothers--swoon with a sexual excitement not seen since the days of Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson. But some think his humping, high-powered choreography is too much. This past January the 20-year-old superstar was arrested in Columbus, Georgia, for breaking an antilewdness ordinance there. He was taken to the police station and fined $652, but he returned to the Columbus Municipal Auditorium in time to join his former group, New Edition, onstage for a song.

So goes life for Brown, a native of Roxbury, Boston's version of Harlem. Along with Keith Sweat and Al B. Sure!, this is the new breed of Black male performer: unambiguous, poised and cocksure. Early this winter (when he was only 19) Brown topped Billboard's pop chart with the Teddy Riley-produced "My Prerogative" (which Brown co-wrote); his album Don't Be Cruel scored number one, has sold more than 3 million copies and is still going strong. This is a startling feat for several reasons. We'll begin on a historical note: Bobby Brown is only the second Black male teenager working solo to put a number-one single on the pop chart--Stevie Wonder had the previous honors with "Fingertips Pt. 2" 26 years ago. The other amazing thing is how a song like "My Prerogative" and an album like Don't Be Cruel (a title that has nothing to do with Elvis, Brown explains: "Somebody created Elvis, taught him to be what he was. I am my own man; nobody taught me how to feel like this") reached the top of the pop charts. Usually when a Black song hits the top of pop, it has paid a toll along the way. Either the lyrics don't reflect Black life, or the music is stripped of its hard, African-derived backbeat.

But Bobby Brown's music is a musical street-corner environment: I call it New Jack Swing. It's hip-hop-raw R&B with drums that kick the deepest bass, synthesized horns--like those of "My Prerogative"--that sound straight out of a Harlem Renaissance gin joint, and lyrics that unabashedly celebrate Black macho. Here's a sample from "Prerogative": "They say I'm nasty," Brown exclaims, "but I don't give a damn/gettin' girls is how I live." Love it or hate it, it can't be denied.

Even as a child, Brown wanted to rule the stage. When he was 3, his mother took him to see James Brown at the Sugar Shack in Boston. He danced in his seat so much during the godfather's performance that she put him onstage during intermission, where he bowled over the startled audience. Childhood wasn't always so sweet, however. Growing up in the Orchard Park Neighborhood Houses, or the "O.P.," he saw the harsher elements of life up close; so close that he was shot when he was 10 years old and stabbed when 11. When he was 12, his best friend died in his arms at a block party after being stabbed. "All these things that happened to me," Brown says, "made me understand at an early age how serious life is. My mother sat me down one day and told me that if I worked hard and kept a strong faith in God, I could get out of the ghetto. If not, I could end up in jail, or in the grave."

So he worked very hard at polishing his craft. Around this time, along with basketball buddies Mike Bivens, Ralph Tresvant, Ricky Bell and Ronnie DeVoe, he formed the cutie-pie group New Edition. They toured and scored big with the infectious, beat-box, Jackson 5-like pop of "Candy Girl" and "Mr. Telephone Man," among other hits. Brown learned about the life of an entertainer firsthand, from the groupies twice his age who clawed at him in every city, to the long hours spent in the recording studio and on the road. He also learned that the music business can be cutthroat--Brown claims he earned almost nothing as a reward for selling millions of records as a member of New Edition. He also found as he got older that he felt the call of his own, harder-edged, musical impulses. So in 1985 he left New Edition to make his way solo. "It was a very difficult decision," Brown says, "because I love those guys so much. We're closer than family. But it was something I had to do."

His first album, King of Stage, was a marginal hit, but Brown wasn't excited about it because it didn't have that street-corner edge. Don't Be Cruel changed all that. Brown admits he's very proud of it: "This album is real special to me. It has so much of a variety of music that I can't pick one song that I like best. I listen to my own album a lot, and I've never done that before."

Some women perceive Bobby Brown to be exactly like his stage persona: a gyrating sexual icon who cares about nothing but bedding the "tenderonis"--those sweet but simpleminded visions that some Black men want their women to be--and making so much money it's stupid. Not true.

"I love women," says Brown, "and I respect them. Black women are special to me, because I know what an inspiration my mother is, not only to me, but to my entire family. A woman is one of God's greatest gifts to man. Without women, man is nothing, this world is nothing."

While Brown wants to make a lot of money, he doesn't want to lavish it all upon himself. A former dance instructor at a neighborhood community center--he was only 11 at the time--he wants to open a chain of dance schools and to build affordable housing for the disadvantaged. "Yeah, I want Donald Trump money," Brown says, "but I want to help the Black community. Why can't Trump--who sees all those homeless people on the streets of New York--take a few million and provide shelters and housing for them? Because they can't pay him back? That's wrong. When I make that type of money, in the hundreds of millions, I have to give some of it back. Build some houses for people who can't afford them, start educational programs so Black kids can get better jobs. Because I didn't become successful by myself. Therefore I'm not out here for myself. I want to lend a hand."

Barry Michael Cooper is the 1987 recipient of the National Association of Black Journalists Journalism Award (for feature writing) and the National Journalism Writing Award from Ball State University. He is a Harlem native.

COPYRIGHT 1989 Essence Communications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group