By Michael A. Gonzales

With Whitney Houston’s comeback disc I Look to You zooming to the top of the charts, the former “crack is wack” poster child has been making the media rounds. From her star-studded preview party at the Beverly Hilton to the highly anticipated interview with Oprah, the former pop princess turned coke queen has been playing the redemption card to the hilt. She has spared no detail, laying bare the most painful moments of her struggles with drug addiction and her turbulent marriage.

Still, through it all, her ex-husband Bobby Brown has been strangely quiet. Although somewhere in the world, Brown might be threatening to toss a TV from the window while calling somebody a bitch, I truly thought we might hear a little rah-rah the original Bad Boy of R&B. Indeed, since his own fall from soul-man grace, scandal has been never been a stranger to Bobby.

“Bobby Brown was not able to sustain his career, because he did not duck scandal, he invited it,” says journalist Barry Michael Cooper, who coined the term “new jack swing” in a 1988. “Scandal was both his badge of honor and his scarlet letter. Somewhere along the way, he could not differentiate between the two.”

The kid who sang sweet fluff like “Candy Girl” as a member of New Edition has since joined the soulful legion of wildboys that includes Ike Turner, Arthur Lee, Sly Stone, David Ruffin and Marvin Gaye. And since he hasn’t released any new music since 1997, it’s easy to forget that Bobby Brown was once the man in the land of soul.

Although I never agreed with those who called him “The King of R&B,” there is no denying the influence of his seven-times-platinum album Don’t Be Cruel—not to mention the videos, the live shows, and persona he held over the public from the day of its release on June 20, 1988. Without a doubt, we can see a little bit of Bobby Brown in Chris Brown, Usher and even Britney Spears, who remade “My Prerogative” in 2004.

“From the beginning of his career, Bobby always wanted to be the center of attention,” remembers Steve Manning, the first publicist/conceptualist for the legendary Boston boy band New Edition. One glance at the photo with the 12-year-old wearing a bright red jacket as he stares boldly into the camera, made it clear that that Brown was not shy. “Bobby knew he had talent and he wanted everybody else to know it too.”

Though Bobby was young, the fiery Aquarius born on February 5, 1969, was a wild child. “I can remember meeting his mom and family, and they all had a street swagger,” Manning continues. “But Bobby was also very driven; he was destined to be a star.”

After shady dealings with their management and label netted them next to nothing, New Edition re-signed with MCA Records, where newly hired executive Jheryl Busby was building a younger, hipper roster

Maintaining their trademark aural innocence, New Edition’s first single was “Cool It Now,” followed a few months later by the perky, yet angst-ridden “Mr. Telephone Man.” Written and produced by Ray Parker Jr., the song was like a Phil Spector teen symphony updated for the age of the synthesizer.

“New Edition always did what they were asked to do,” recalls their former MCA press agent Juanita Stephens. “But Bobby was always the more hyper member of the group. He was always moving around; he’d even be doing push-ups while waiting to be interviewed.”

By the time New Edition released their third album, All for Love, in 1985 the once solid group began to shatter. “They were one of the tightest groups ever, but when Bobby’s personality started coming out on stage, it changed the dynamic,” Stephens continues. “Bobby started breaking the rules and his behavior on stage became more rock ‘n’ roll.” At the end of the year, the group felt pressured to vote Bobby out. “His attitude was, ‘Fuck it, I’ll do my own album.’ And, he did.”

Released in 1986, Bobby’s first solo joint, King of Stage, wasn’t the blockbuster folks expected. Instead of highlighting Brown’s rebellious side, songs like “Girlfriend” and “Girl Next Door” weren’t much different from New Edition’s middle-of-the-road material. “Stage is a generally decent, though not breathtaking, album that stands on its own merit,” writes AllMusic scribe Alex Henderson.

While “Girlfriend,” written and produced by Cameo leader Larry Blackmon, went to number one on the R&B charts, King of Stage failed to generate much buzz. “The album sold about 500,000 copies, but Bobby fans didn’t feel the record represented him,” says Juanita Stephens. “They kind of dismissed it.”

While some record label honchos shared the public’s indifferent attitude towards Bobby’s solo career, a young executive named Louil Silas, Jr was determined to mold Brown into the soul sensation he believed him to be. With no one at the company really paying attention to Bobby, Louil put
his underdog singer in the studio with relative newcomers LA & Babyface and Teddy Riley.

“A lot A&R people were afraid to work with us, because they thought we were under exclusive contract to SOLAR Records,” recalls Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds. Along with his partner Antonio “LA” Reid, they were the musical becaons behind their own group The Deele as well as producing the Whispers’ classic “Rock Steady.”

LA and Babyface had also worked with Silas on tracks for upcoming MCA acts Pebbles and The Boys. “Louil was one of the few people who wasn’t afraid of (SOLAR Records boss) Dick Griffey, which was the reason we got our shot to do Bobby.” Visiting the production duo in their Hollywood apartment, Bobby listened to Babyface sing demos of “Don’t Be Cruel” and “Every Little Step.”

Thinking back, Babyface recalls, “We wrote songs that were sweet and nice, but they also had a little edge to them. Bobby was pretty agreeable when he heard the material.” Not long after that initial meeting, Brown began recording with the duo at Silver Lake Studios in Los Angeles.

“Bobby had a pure vibe and a passion that was unmistakable, but he just needed a little guidance,” says Babyface, who cites “Roni” as his personal favorite. “We just went in and recorded without problems. We didn’t spend a lot of time in the studio, but listening to Bobby Brown record those songs, it was obvious that he had star power.

Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the country, a Harlem-raised young man named Teddy Riley was preparing his own brand of funk to present to Brown and Silas. “I came from the streets, so I made street music,” says Teddy Riley of the New Jack Swing sound that he invented in his living room in Saint Nick projects. “But, I also added in a little gospel as well as the groups I had seen at the Apollo (Parliament, Al Green) when I was a kid.”

Having experimented with this new sound on Johnny Kemp’s “Just Got Paid,” Keith Sweat’s “I Want Her,” Al B. Sure’s “Nite and Day” and his own group Guy, Teddy was looking for a young black superstar to carry his New Jack Swing sound to worldwide popularity. Enter Bobby Brown.

“On Don’t Be Cruel, both Teddy and LA/Babyface propelled soul into the digital age: New Jack Swing,” says Barry Michael Cooper. “Teddy invented it, and LA/Face refined it. The music was an amalgam of soul, hip hop, jazz, gospel, and fusion. It was an operatic soundtrack to the street cinema of their collective existence—and it worked.”

Having worked alongside Teddy on amazing tracks like “My Perogative” and “I’ll Be Good to You,” musical arranger Bernard Belle told writer Andrew Knyte for NJS4E. “Bobby Brown was a ball of energy, and he was never tired. In the studio, if you told him to do something and it didn’t come out right, he’d be willing to do it over and over and over again. He was going to do whatever it took to get the project done.”

Yet, while Bobby was jetting between coasts, putting in the hours to complete his project, MCA staff barely realized that the boy was working at all. “There was no buzz in the office about the Bobby Brown record,” states Juanita Stephens. “In fact, Don’t Be Cruel and New Edition’s new album (N.E. Heartbreak) was set to ship the same day. Anticipation was high for New Edition, but I had to be fair to both.”

Once Don’t Be Cruel began getting copious radio spins in the spring of 1988, MCA’s doubts quickly vanished. Leading off with the title track as the first single, Bobby soon followed up with the harder sound of “My Prerogative.” Former Keith Sweat manager Vincent Davis declares, “Those records were so strong, they gave Bobby a whole new identity; he wasn’t a kid anymore. The power and greatness of that music defined a new movement in Black pop.”

In addition, Bobby became the opening act on the (New Edition) N.E. Heartbreak tour that also featured Al. B. Sure, Troop and Levert. A few months later, as Don’t Be Cruel near the 3x platinum mark, Bobby was headlining his own worldwide tour; some nights, he’d be on stage non-stop for 2 ½ hours. “To see Bobby Brown on stage was like watching James Brown, Jackie Wilson, and Nijinsky, all at once,” says Barry Michael Cooper. “His shows left me speechless.”

Strolling out wearing a bowler hat and dripping with gold, Brown’s show was all about music and seduction. He drove his mostly female crowd into a frenzy with intense choreography and the poetry of his pelvis, Bobby was in his glory. So strong was his mojo that in 1989, he was arrested in Columbia, Georgia for dirty dancing on stage with a random female from the audience.

“Bobby was on MTV at a time when most Black singers were following in the androgynous path of Prince and Michael Jackson,” says writer Andrew Knyte. “For many young Black boys the uber-masculinity of Bobby Brown was a breath of fresh air.”

I can say for sure that Brown’s macho swagger was impressive to me. In my mid-twenties, I can recall being pumped by his overflow of testosterone when I went to a show at Madison Square Garden (where for the finale he bought out prizefighter Mike Tyson another young man who would catch a bad one fron the media in years to come). It was only after continuously playing “My Prerogative” that I finally had the courage to break up with my bugged-out girlfriend.

But after that landmark sophomore album, fans of the newly proclaimed “King of R&B” had to wait four years for his self-titled follow-up disc. “The follow-up album took so long, because he was touring so much with Don’t Be Cruel,” admits Juanita Stephens, who later became Brown’s manager (not to be confused with Karine Steffans, aka Superhead, Bobby’s on-again-off-again girlfriend in the last days of his marriage). “Bobby was constantly working, but when he started dating Whitney Houston it became more about her concerns and he became more of a family person.”

With the exception of a track from the Ghostbusters 2 soundtrack (“On Our Own”) and a duet with Glen Medeiros titled “She Isn’t Worth It,” Bobby’s fans were left hanging for too long. Though it would go on to sell two million copies, Bobby was a flop both artistically and sales wise.

By 1992, the landscape of R&B had changed once again. R. Kelly and Jodeci, just to name two acts inspired by Brown’s he-man bravado, had moved to the forefront. “New Jack Swing became passé very quickly,” says famed A&R director Gary Harris. “The music the kids were listening to had become more downtempo, and that wasn’t the vibe Bobby was on.” All we had left were a slow, sad spiral of tabloid headlines about Bobby and Whitney’s misadventures—and of course, the memories.

Babyface . Barry Michael Coooper . Barry Michael Cooper . Bobby Brown . Britney Spears . Cameo . Chris Brown . Ike Turner . Jackie Wilson . James Brown . Johnny Kemp . Karrine Steffans . L.A. Reid . Larry Blackmon . Marvin Gaye . Michael Jackson . New Edition . New Jack Swing . Oprah Winfrey . Prince . R&B . Soul . Soul Music . Superhead . Teddy Riley . Usher . Whitney Houston New Music Spotlight . Soul Legends