Every Little Step

by Bobby Brown

  Something in Common

  Soon after our wedding, I traveled down to Virginia Beach to work on some tracks with Teddy Riley for my next album, the follow-up to Don’t Be Cruel, which would be called, simply, Bobby. Whitney didn’t want me to be in Virginia Beach by myself—though I’m not sure why. It was early in the marriage, so I guess she still didn’t completely trust me. So she came with me.

  One day when I was in the studio with Teddy, laughing and joking around, Teddy thought it was funny that Whitney and I kept going outside to smoke a cigarette. It was a beautiful day and we loved getting outside, joking and cutting up. One particular time when we came back inside, Teddy said, “You two have too much in common.”

  When he said that, we all looked at each other. We knew we had something. Bernard Belle was there with us. So we started trying to figure it out. We all wrote the song “Something in Common” together—Teddy, Whitney, me, Bernard, plus two other guys, Mark Middleton and Alfred Rosemond. It was such a great time for us.

  We did it all in one day. We finished writing the lyrics and started laying down the track together. That meant I had to sing opposite one of the greatest voices of all time. Was I intimidated? Hell yeah. I’ve never thought of myself as a singer’s singer. I can hold a tune. I’m a singer. She’s a sanger. I could sing. She could sang. But I learned a lot from her, just by watching her work and also by her offering suggestions. She taught me how to use my voice, how to bend my notes, how to chop my voice when I needed. She was a great teacher. First of all, just to be around her when she was singing, to watch how effortlessly she did it, made you want to be better as a singer. That’s what she did for me. And if she saw me straining to do something, she would give me a different way to do it, another way of approaching the note that would be easier.

  While she taught me how to sing, I taught her how to dance. At first, she was uncomfortable with dancing. Admittedly she didn’t have much rhythm. But she had a certain flair. If we were dancing together, she could hold her own. And we did love dancing together. I even sent my girl dancers on tour with her. I had them working with her and she progressively got better and better. With the two of us working together, sharing our strengths, I think we made each other better entertainers.

  When you watch the video for “Something in Common,” you can see all of Whitney’s cute little signature moves. She’s not bouncing around as much as I am in the video, but she’s looking smooth and sexy as she dances in her own inimitable way. You can also see glimpses of our playfulness in the video. In one scene when I walk up behind her, she lunges back at me like she’s going to backhand me in the face. That illustrated the constant play-wrestling and play-fighting we did in our relationship.

  A month after our wedding, my third studio album, Bobby, was released by MCA. While the album didn’t do the crazy numbers of Don’t Be Cruel, it still did very well. It sold over two million units and reached number one on the Billboard R & B album chart and number two on the overall Billboard 200 chart. The singles “Humpin’ Around” and “Good Enough” both made it into the top ten of the Billboard Hot 100 singles list. In addition, “Humpin’ Around” was nominated for a Grammy for Best R & B Male Vocal Performance but lost to Al Jarreau’s “Heaven and Earth.” That was the category I had won three years earlier with “Every Little Step.” We were happy, and our careers were still riding high.

  Whitney and I spent a lot of time watching television, cracking on people. That was one of our favorite pastimes. Well, that and sex. We did a whole lot of lovemaking. Nearly every day—and often more than once a day. Throughout the first decade or so of our marriage, before things started turning sour, we were always hot for each other. If we weren’t in a place where we could make it happen, sometimes we’d sneak off and fuck in a closet somewhere. We just turned each other on like that. Nip was an incredibly sexual, sensual being. For me she was just like a sexual magnet. Whenever I saw her, I just wanted to touch her. I’m also a very sexual person, so we were an explosive combination. When you watch footage of us together back then and you see us hanging all over each other, that was real. We probably had just finished fucking or were about to slip away and get busy.

  Not long after our wedding, we got some joyful news in the New Jersey mansion: Whitney was pregnant. In fact, she had been about a month or so pregnant on our wedding day. It was exciting news for me; I love kids so much that I was giddy about adding another one to my brood.

  Whitney’s pregnancy went smoothly, for the most part. She got real big real fast. It seemed like one second she was this svelte goddess and when I turned my head she ballooned into all belly. She craved hot dogs and pork and beans—not exactly the meal of multimillionaires. She also craved sandwiches from Blimpie, the subs she grew up eating in Jersey. I remember times when I was on tour when I’d have to leave the hotel in the middle of the night to find a Blimpie for my wife.

  The day the baby came was joyous; it seemed like every member of her family was waiting in the hospital in the New Jersey suburbs for our new baby to emerge.

  After Bobbi Kristina joined our household, there was nothing but love flowing through our family. We were so happy to have this little bundle of energy around us all the time. Whitney refused to go anywhere without her baby in her arms. It was so pleasing to see her as a mother, watching her give so much of herself to this little person. After Bobbi Kristina started walking, the three of us would spend hours at a time playing her favorite game, hide-and-go-seek. She would squeeze her little body into all kinds of hidden corners in that huge house. But as soon as we started looking for her, loudly announcing that we were coming to get her, Krissi couldn’t keep quiet and would start squealing in delight. What a beautiful sound that was.

  I have such vivid memories of the three of us playing in bed together, romping around or just lying there with the TV on. We were so proud of our little girl. Whitney always claimed that Bobbi Kris looked just like her. I wouldn’t say anything; I’d let her have that because I knew the truth. As soon as she opened her mouth and smiled, you knew exactly who her daddy was.

  “That’s the only thing you got! That damn gap!” Whitney would say.

  Even before Bobbi Kris was born we always had a lot of staff in that New Jersey house. Whitney’s aunt Bae, who wasn’t really her aunt but who had grown up with Whitney’s dad and had helped raise Whitney, came to live with us and help run the household. After the baby came, caring for her became one of Aunt Bae’s primary responsibilities, assisted by her two grown daughters. I didn’t have any of my family around me in the beginning. I felt like I needed to get away from my family at that point because all I did was spend money on them, take care of them. That had always been extremely important to me, so I’m not complaining. But I did need a break. When Bobbi Kris was a little older, eventually my sister Leolah came to stay with us to act as Whitney’s assistant and help care for Bobbi Kris.

  As a family, the three of us cooked together, we swam in the pool together. At a moment’s notice we would decide to take a trip. We liked the Bahamas, so I’d call our money managers and tell them, “I need thirty thousand dollars and a plane.”

  Then Whitney’s family would want to come with us—her brothers, Gary and Michael, and their wives and kids, Raya, Gary and Blair. Next thing I knew our spur-of-the-moment trip had turned into a major undertaking. But it did limit the amount of time the three of us—me, Whitney and Krissi—had to spend together as a family.

  Our fame got especially hard for Krissi when she started school. We would make efforts to hide her identity from the other students, like registering her at the school under a different name. But then Whitney or I would drop her off or someone else would drive her and pull up in a Bentley, so it wouldn’t take long for her cover to be blown. One of the only black children in the school and she’s getting dropped off alternately by Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown? Hmmm—wonder who that little girl could be?

  That’s the cross Bobbi Kris had to bear from a yo
ung age. My other kids didn’t really have to go through that because I spent so much time away from them.

  A FEW WORDS FROM LANDON BROWN

  People have been approaching me since I was a little boy, for as long as I can remember, telling me how great my father is. Teachers would be starstruck and give me special treatment. It was all very weird to me. At one point I went to school with Darryl Strawberry’s son and he explained it to me: “Well, my dad is really good at baseball.”

  So in my mind I thought, Oh, if your dad is really good at something then other people admire him for it. My dad is really good at performing!

  When I was in seventh grade I went to live with my dad and Whitney in New Jersey. At the time I called her “Mom.” I figured it was okay since my mom made me call my stepdad, Carl Payne, “Dad.” When I got to the house, even before I had a chance to call her “Mom,” she said to me, “I’m your mom too, so call me ‘Mom.’”

  This was 1998, six years into their marriage. Bobbi Kristina was five at the time, so I was excited to spend time with my little sister. In the time I lived there, I got an interesting view of their relationship from up close. Everybody makes a big deal out of their arguments and bad times—like no one has bad times and arguments—but if you were in the room with Whitney and my dad and my dad left the room, you would still think he was in the room because she was like the exact same person as him. It was weird. They both had this awkward laugh, and they were both completely honest with the things they thought. Neither one of them had a filter. They agreed on so many things and were so much alike that when they did disagree on something, it was bound to become a big deal. My dad would go from frustrated to happy, then right back to frustrated.

  A few months after I got there, my dad had to spend time in jail because of a drunk-driving conviction from a few years earlier. He was upset a lot and you could tell that he was having a hard time. When he was in prison, I got a chance to talk to him on the phone.

  “How are you doing, Dad?” I asked, excited to be talking to him.

  “How the fuck you think I’m doing, I’m in jail!” he responded.

  I was always very sensitive, so I started crying. Whitney had me lie down with her and she started rubbing my head.

  “It’s okay, baby,” she said to me. “He’s just frustrated.”

  She was pep-talking me out of my tears. That’s when it hit me—with all the people talking in town, all the media and newspaper reports about my father’s behavior, I understood. People don’t get that he’s human; he has to deal with human things. The world wants him to be crazy, they like when he acts that way, but at some point it’s just too much for him to handle. It was the same with their relationship. Everybody wanted to know about their relationship, but with a lack of privacy and way too much attention, a relationship is stressful.

  CHAPTER 7

  TROUBLE MAN

  In September 1995, when I was twenty-six, I went up to Boston to visit family and friends. I stayed in a hotel near where Kim lived with LaPrincia and Bobby Jr. I spent as much time as I could with my kids. But at night I hung out with my boys, driving around town in my cream-colored Bentley Azure, which had been a gift from Whitney. One night we went to a little spot called the Biarritz that was owned by some police officers, so cops hung out there all the time. One of my dudes was Steven Sealy, who was actually engaged to marry my sister Carol.

  We all walked into the joint and assumed that the whole group had made it inside. Little did we know that Sealy was being held outside because he didn’t have the proper ID or something minor like that. Sealy reacted by beating up the cop who wouldn’t let him in. Boom boom boom, he hit the guy at the door and fucked him up. We heard the commotion and so we went back outside. Sealy was talking a gang of shit.

  We grabbed our friend, got out of there in a hurry and went back to a friend’s house, got high and drunk together, and all fell asleep.

  I had been hearing about this nasty gang war that had been going on in Roxbury. Most disturbing, it was taking place between guys who were all from Orchard Park. That really upset me; these guys were not supposed to be fighting and killing each other. So I told my people to get them all together so that we could have a gang summit of sorts and try to bring an end to the bloodshed. A couple nights later we went back to that same cop club to hold our summit. It was a beautiful gathering. I gave them a little speech. Not exactly MLK, but it got the job done—or so I thought.

  “This is Bean, nigga. Boston. We supposed to be together; we ain’t supposed to be fighting each other. Y’all from OP? We used to fight other fuckin’ projects. This is some bullshit—we can’t kill each other, man.”

  Everybody agreed with me, we all toasted, everything was good. We commenced to partying in the spot and everybody had a great time. As we were leaving, my cousin started arguing with me because he wanted to sit in the passenger seat of the Azure, which I was about to settle into.

  “Dude, really?” I said. “Just get in the back and let’s go.”

  As I’m getting out of the car to let my cousin into the backseat, Sealy leaned over to me and handed me a gun.

  “Hold on to this,” he said. “Some shit might pop off.”

  “What?” I said as I took it from him.

  As I got back into the car, I heard pow pow pow. Somebody had come up right next to the car and started shooting. I ducked down into the seat and realized that Sealy had been shot in the head. The gunshots were still slamming into the Bentley and my mind was in overdrive. I crawled into the area under the steering wheel next to the gas pedal and the brakes. Pow pow. More bullets hitting the car. I pulled Sealy down on top of me, out of the line of fire. But he was already gone. I moved up enough to see out of the windshield. I cocked the gun he had given me, looking out to see if I could find the shooter. I saw the shooter—he was an old friend of mine from OP! I could see him straining to figure out where I was. More bullets whizzed by the steering wheel. Clearly, I was the target.

  I decided I needed to get out of the car. If he was gunning for me, I was too easy a target inside the vehicle. So I rolled out of the passenger door and crouched next to the car. My cousin and another friend were still hunched down in the backseat. I immediately felt pain. Turns out a bullet had just grazed me. I still have that scar.

  I waited until I heard the guns click, meaning they were out of ammo. I took off running, turning and firing behind me as I ran to make sure they couldn’t return fire. When I was convinced I was out of danger, I tossed the gun toward a fire station.

  Sealy was brought to Boston City Hospital. He had been shot several times in the head. I stayed at his bedside the whole time, praying he would wake up. But he was gone. The newspaper stories reported that I stomped around after the shooting, punching walls and shouting, “They got my boy!” Police also said I talked to them right after the shooting, but I have no recollection of that conversation.

  My sister Carol was devastated—and she blamed me. She didn’t speak to me for many years after that. It was upsetting to me because we had always been so close. But at the same time, I knew his death wasn’t my fault. I understood her pain, but I was trying to bring these guys together and stop the violence. I had great intentions, but the result was horrible. A dude named John Tibbs was eventually convicted for Sealy’s murder. Carol only started talking to me again a few years ago; now we speak at least a few times a month.

  Home Again

  When the guys in New Edition started making noise in 1995 about having me rejoin the group for its next album and tour, I was ready to get out of the house. Krissi was about two and I had spent the last couple of years at home as a father and husband and also managing Whitney’s affairs. I had gotten the break from performing and traveling that I had been looking for; now I was ready to get back out there.

  It had been a decade since I walked away from New Edition. The only group member I’d kept in contact with over the ensuing years was Ralph Tresvant. He and I remained close as ever,
but I didn’t speak to Mike, Ronnie or Ricky for many years after the breakup. I admit that I still held on to quite a bit of animosity. After all, they had allowed management—in fact, the same people who were managing me for my solo career—to talk them into voting me out of my own group, the group I started. That didn’t go down easy for me, so I was pissed off for a long time.

  But over the years my bitterness had subsided. I started to ask myself, What the fuck am I mad about? I had gone on to a hugely successful, groundbreaking solo career. I was married to one of the most beautiful, talented artists in the world. I had an adorable baby girl and three other wonderful kids. Life was looking real good for me.

  The members of New Edition couldn’t deny my success, so they granted me the respect I hoped for when we came back together. So many years had passed that the tensions were mostly gone. We were grown men now, so we had developed maturity and perspective. As for me, I didn’t need the reunion. I didn’t need money, and I certainly didn’t need any more fame or notoriety. I was happy to get back out on the road with my old friends.

  Right away, when we started talking about money I was brought back to the early days of New Edition. The first thing I heard was that the tour would have thirty dates—but the group members weren’t going to make any money. We would have to do a second leg of the tour in order to clear any money. My brother, Tommy, and I thought that was absurd. This tour was going to be a major event, just like the album release. The Home Again album sold 441,000 copies in its first week, debuting at number one on the Billboard charts. It eventually would sell more than two million, demonstrating that there was tremendous fan interest in our reunion. But yet, the performers on the tour wouldn’t make any money?