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Bobby Brown: Cocaine Chicken, Horny Ghosts, and His Prerogative · DISGRACELAND

0:00
Speaker 1: Disgraceland as a production of Double Elvis. The stories about
0:21
Speaker 1: Bobby Brown are insane. He was arrested in the middle
0:26
Speaker 1: of a live performance for violating a Leude Act law.
0:30
Speaker 1: His bad boy influence may have been the reason Mike
0:33
Speaker 1: Tyson dramatically lost his heavyweight title. He lived in a
0:37
Speaker 1: haunted house in which he claims he had a sexual
0:40
Speaker 1: encounter with a ghost. He was shot in the knee,
0:44
Speaker 1: watched his best friend get stabbed to death, and discovered
0:48
Speaker 1: a secret of his mother's by mistakenly using cocaine as
0:51
Speaker 1: an ingredient while making chicken. He thrust and gyrated his
0:56
Speaker 1: way to the top of the charts in the late
0:58
Speaker 1: eighties and early nineties, married to fellow pop star Whitney Houston,
1:02
Speaker 1: and made great music. Unlike that loop I played for
1:07
Speaker 1: you at the top of the show. That wasn't great music.
1:10
Speaker 1: That was a preset loop from my melotron called Wristwatch
1:14
Speaker 1: Overcoat MK. Two. I played you that loop because I
1:20
Speaker 1: can't afford the rights Together Forever by Rick Astley. And
1:24
Speaker 1: why would I play you that specific slice of Rick
1:27
Speaker 1: Rolls Slight Return Cheese? Could I afford it? Because that
1:32
Speaker 1: was the number one song in America on June twentieth,
1:36
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty eight, and that was the day that Bobby
1:39
Speaker 1: Brown released his second solo album, Don't Be Cool, an
1:43
Speaker 1: album that became the biggest in the world at the time,
1:46
Speaker 1: A true sensation that changed music and Bobby Brown's life forever.
1:52
Speaker 1: On this episode lude Axe Horny, Ghosts, Cocaine, Chicken, Heavyweight,
1:58
Speaker 1: Chimpsitney Houston and Bobby Brown. I'm Jake Brennan and this
2:05
Speaker 1: is Disgraceland. When Bobby Brown was a kid, his father,
2:31
Speaker 1: a construction worker, would tell Bobby and his siblings, a
2:35
Speaker 1: working man is everything. When you got work to do,
2:38
Speaker 1: you work hard, do your job and go home. Years later,
2:44
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty nine, hard work paid for a twenty
2:47
Speaker 1: year old Bobby Brown's new home, a fourteen thousand square
2:51
Speaker 1: foot Tudor mansion in Atlanta. Some said it was the
2:55
Speaker 1: largest house in America when it was built, nearly two
2:57
Speaker 1: decades prior, a house once owned by Mike Thievis aka
3:02
Speaker 1: the Scarface of Porn. And just like Bobby Brown, Mike
3:06
Speaker 1: Thavis was at the time he resided in this opulent
3:09
Speaker 1: mansion at the top of his game. Dirty magazines, Dirty bookstores,
3:14
Speaker 1: dirty movie theaters. Mike Thievis owned them all, not least
3:18
Speaker 1: of which where was bread and butter? The peep shows,
3:22
Speaker 1: those cramp dirty little private rooms where a quarter brought
3:25
Speaker 1: you a few more seconds of flesh on celluloid purre, depravity,
3:29
Speaker 1: flickering on a tiny screen as your eyeballs bulged from
3:32
Speaker 1: your sockets, just like your pants are bulging right now.
3:35
Speaker 1: You prefer the little freak. But that's another story. The
3:38
Speaker 1: story I'm trying to tell is that all that smut,
3:41
Speaker 1: it made the Scarface of porn here, Mike Thievis, filthy, filthy, rich,
3:47
Speaker 1: hundreds of millions of dollars and counting. It was just
3:51
Speaker 1: like Bobby Brown's father said, you work hard and do
3:54
Speaker 1: your job. Mike Thavis had work to do, hard work,
3:58
Speaker 1: necessary work, inviting his former business partner, a man who
4:02
Speaker 1: is now his rival, to his office where for the
4:05
Speaker 1: crimes of stealing his peep show technology. Mike Thievis put
4:09
Speaker 1: three bullets in a man's chests and then a fourth
4:13
Speaker 1: in his head. And now the Scarface of Porn was
4:18
Speaker 1: doing life in prison. But back at his former residence,
4:24
Speaker 1: new homeowner Bobby Brown was making sure the party kept going.
4:27
Speaker 1: Bobby wasn't making his millions from porn, though the number
4:30
Speaker 1: of naked strippers making themselves comfortable in the place was
4:33
Speaker 1: enough to convince you otherwise. Many in America saw Bobby
4:36
Speaker 1: Brown as bordering on pornographic himself, like those squares in
4:40
Speaker 1: Georgia who busted him for violating some Lundak law when
4:43
Speaker 1: all he was trying to do was dance. Bobby's trademark
4:47
Speaker 1: pelvic Thrust put him in handcuffs right in the middle
4:50
Speaker 1: of his own show. But unlike Mike Thievis, Bobby paid
4:54
Speaker 1: the six hundred and fifty two dollars bail and was
4:57
Speaker 1: back on stage after the world's longest intern doing the
5:01
Speaker 1: same thing Elvis was doing three decades prior. But this
5:05
Speaker 1: wasn't nineteen fifty nine. This was nineteen eighty nine, The
5:09
Speaker 1: year of Bobby Brown. The year of his tight New
5:13
Speaker 1: Jack Fade aka the gumby, his baggy pants, his shirts
5:17
Speaker 1: that flowed like blouses and which would soon be tossed
5:20
Speaker 1: to the wayside to make way for Bobby's cut chest
5:22
Speaker 1: and alves. The year of Don't Be Cruel, Bobby's sophomore
5:27
Speaker 1: soul about a record that brought pod culture to the
5:30
Speaker 1: mainstream and hip hop's Hard Knocked Sensibilities to R and
5:34
Speaker 1: B music, the top selling album of the year, over
5:38
Speaker 1: five million copies, released just before Bobby Brown's twentieth birthday,
5:43
Speaker 1: making him the second teenager in history behind Stevie Wonder,
5:47
Speaker 1: to top the Billboard chart. Bobby Brown was a true sensation,
5:52
Speaker 1: as was his Atlanta match. Portraits of Bobby made out
5:56
Speaker 1: of stained glass in the windows, a two story fish
5:59
Speaker 1: tank nestled beneath the golden staircase, gold double doors that
6:03
Speaker 1: led into the bedroom. The place was always packed the
6:07
Speaker 1: hottest women, most loyal entourage, friends, family, and lots and
6:12
Speaker 1: lots of ghosts. These ghosts walked the hallways, they floated
6:18
Speaker 1: out of the walls, spirits from Mike Theavis's porn Empire,
6:23
Speaker 1: the Peep Show, hard Bodies, magazine, centerfolds, maybe even scorned
6:27
Speaker 1: ex business partners back from the dead and looking to
6:29
Speaker 1: get revenge on Old's scarface. The place was definitely haunted.
6:35
Speaker 1: Nearly everyone who visited the mansion said so, but only
6:39
Speaker 1: Bobby Brown saw the ghosts that came out of the
6:41
Speaker 1: mirror in his ceiling. Lying there in bed naked, looking
6:46
Speaker 1: up at that handsome devil in the reflection above, when
6:49
Speaker 1: suddenly she appeared hovering in the air, long hair flowing,
6:55
Speaker 1: her eyes locked on his transparent a vision and then
6:59
Speaker 1: more more than a vision, a feeling, as she descended
7:03
Speaker 1: right on top of him, hard, willing, able, feeling himself
7:08
Speaker 1: not so much passed through her as enter her, and
7:11
Speaker 1: the ghosts now grinding him, riding him. And then hold up.
7:17
Speaker 1: I know what you're thinking. This is the craziest fucking
7:19
Speaker 1: thing that I've heard in my life. And you're probably right,
7:21
Speaker 1: But Bobby Brown swears that this actually happened, that he
7:25
Speaker 1: fucked a ghost people. Okay, he delivers this story as
7:28
Speaker 1: one hundred percent fact in his memoir. And here's the thing.
7:32
Speaker 1: Bobby Brown was a horny motherfucker back in the day,
7:34
Speaker 1: so it's not surprising that he tried to get with
7:36
Speaker 1: a ghost or vice versa. Bobby Brown got his fuck
7:40
Speaker 1: on people in a major way Starlit singers, dancers, groupies,
7:44
Speaker 1: Janet Jackson and Madonna, allegedly as early as fourteen years old,
7:48
Speaker 1: when he hooked up with an in me at a
7:49
Speaker 1: woman's prison. And we'll get to that. Back to the
7:53
Speaker 1: Don't Be Cruel era touring behind don't be cool in Japan,
7:58
Speaker 1: Bobby's hotel suite was full of women, nearly two dozen
8:02
Speaker 1: by his count, all of them desiring the very thing
8:05
Speaker 1: many women desired when they watched Bobby hump the floor
8:08
Speaker 1: on stage. They were getting what they wanted, not just
8:11
Speaker 1: for the star of the show, but with the heavyweight
8:13
Speaker 1: champion of the world as well, Bobby Brown's good friend
8:17
Speaker 1: Mike Tyson, two giants of pop culture at the time,
8:21
Speaker 1: so untouchable it seemed that the rules no longer applied
8:24
Speaker 1: to them, and they were rolling so much money that
8:26
Speaker 1: you could let a pile of it on fire and
8:27
Speaker 1: tomorrow more would just magically appear in its place. There's
8:31
Speaker 1: Bobby and his bence. Drove it to the airport, parked it,
8:34
Speaker 1: left it, never went back for it. Fuck it, but
8:37
Speaker 1: buy a new one. Didn't matter. Bobby Brown, like Mike Tyson,
8:41
Speaker 1: like Mike Thiavis, had money to burn. He had a
8:44
Speaker 1: burning libido to match. Now getting his rocks off with
8:48
Speaker 1: a suite full of Japanese women, the undisputed champ, riding
8:51
Speaker 1: shotgun wingman style. That is, the party didn't stop, just
8:56
Speaker 1: like it didn't stop if Bobby's Atlanta match, but Mike
9:03
Speaker 1: Tyson had work to do. He had a title to
9:06
Speaker 1: defend just hours away. Now he had a fight against
9:09
Speaker 1: the latest challenger, Buster Douglas. Tyson had the WBC Championship belt,
9:15
Speaker 1: the WBA and the IBF, and Buster Douglas just had
9:20
Speaker 1: a goofy name, and the odds were overwhelmingly in Mike
9:23
Speaker 1: Tyson's favor to win, just as they always were still
9:27
Speaker 1: right now. The night before the fight, it was something
9:31
Speaker 1: like two o'clock, three o'clock in the morning. Mike Bobby
9:34
Speaker 1: was saying, Man, you gotta quit. You gotta go to
9:37
Speaker 1: bed and rest up for tomorrow. Quit now. Let Bobby
9:40
Speaker 1: Brown have all the fun. Mike Tyson wasn't quitting shit.
9:44
Speaker 1: He could beat Buster Douglas with a raging hangover and
9:47
Speaker 1: a sword dick, or so he thought. Mike Tyson thought wrong.
9:52
Speaker 1: Next day, Iron Mike went down to the tenth round
9:55
Speaker 1: when Buster Douglas delivered a whopping uppercut followed by four
9:59
Speaker 1: hard punches to the head. Mike Tyson was knocked down
10:02
Speaker 1: and knocked out for the first time in his career.
10:05
Speaker 1: Because he stayed up too late the night before, partying
10:07
Speaker 1: with Bobby Brown, the biggest pop star in the world
10:11
Speaker 1: and also one of the world's baddest of bad influences.
10:16
Speaker 1: A true bad boy. This is what they called him,
10:20
Speaker 1: and this is what they've been calling him his entire life.
10:47
Speaker 1: Nineteen eighty three, Boston, Massachusetts, Bobby Brown felt that familiar
10:52
Speaker 1: sensation bubble up from his loins as he looked around
10:55
Speaker 1: the room. He was surrounded by women, all of them
10:58
Speaker 1: bad girls, and I'm talking really bad you know, the
11:01
Speaker 1: kind of the ones you shouldn't be hanging around with,
11:04
Speaker 1: but you can't help it. And the attraction was magnetic,
11:08
Speaker 1: it was primal. But here attraction between Bobby Brown and
11:12
Speaker 1: most of these women was also illegal because Bobby was
11:17
Speaker 1: just a teenager and these women were, in many cases
11:21
Speaker 1: much older. Besides Carl desires were forbidden precisely because of
11:26
Speaker 1: where they were at the moment. Prison Boston PD didn't
11:31
Speaker 1: dare stick young Bobby in lock up with adult men.
11:34
Speaker 1: Those hard timers would eat this kid alive. Instead, they
11:38
Speaker 1: put him in with the women where he could sit
11:40
Speaker 1: and think about what he had done driving a moped
11:43
Speaker 1: without a license, a present he bought himself when he
11:45
Speaker 1: and the other guys in his R and B group
11:47
Speaker 1: new addition, scored their first hit with Candy Girl and
11:51
Speaker 1: each got five hundred dollars in return. But right now
11:55
Speaker 1: he wasn't thinking about the moped or the arrest. Teenage
11:58
Speaker 1: Bobby Brown was just like Bobby Brown at any age.
12:01
Speaker 1: He did what he wanted, what he wanted, and everyone
12:03
Speaker 1: else could just fuck her at the hell off. That
12:06
Speaker 1: was his well, you know, right now he was thinking
12:10
Speaker 1: about the women here in the joint, one in particular,
12:12
Speaker 1: a friend of his sisters who was staring down from
12:15
Speaker 1: across the room. She was close to twenty. At least
12:18
Speaker 1: she knew what he was thinking about. She could read
12:21
Speaker 1: his mind. She led him by the hand off to
12:23
Speaker 1: some dark corner where Bobby Brown had one of his
12:26
Speaker 1: earliest sexual experiences, again in prison, with an older woman.
12:32
Speaker 1: In a way, Bobby was following his old man's advice working,
12:36
Speaker 1: because sometimes the work you had to do was making
12:38
Speaker 1: the best out of a bad situation. Sometimes it met
12:41
Speaker 1: working a room, and sometimes it meant work in the crowd,
12:45
Speaker 1: work built core memories had done so for years, eleven
12:50
Speaker 1: years earlier, in fact, watching James Brown on stage at
12:54
Speaker 1: the Sugar Shack over on Boyleston, right off the common
12:57
Speaker 1: some twenty minutes from the Orchard Park projects in nearby Rocksbury,
13:00
Speaker 1: where Bobby called home. Some people are baptized in the church,
13:04
Speaker 1: some are washed in the blood. Bobby Brown was baptized
13:08
Speaker 1: on a stage at just three years old, next to
13:11
Speaker 1: Sole Brother Number one, a man for whom work was
13:14
Speaker 1: practically his middle may. For years after, Bobby Brown continued
13:19
Speaker 1: to be motivated by the work that James Brown in
13:21
Speaker 1: The Relation put into his show, a show on which
13:24
Speaker 1: he invited kids like Bobby on stage to dance. Young
13:27
Speaker 1: Bobby Brown was now dancing on street corners for pocket change,
13:31
Speaker 1: and before he hit puberty, he was hitting the weekend
13:34
Speaker 1: talent shows at the local clubs. He rolled up the
13:36
Speaker 1: block parties and challenged anyone with two working legs to
13:39
Speaker 1: a dance battle. He had confidence on one shoulder and
13:42
Speaker 1: a chip on the other, absolutely determined to prove anyone
13:45
Speaker 1: wrong who said he didn't have it, but he did
13:49
Speaker 1: have it, just like his father had pride every time
13:52
Speaker 1: he gazed up at the Prudential building and marveled at
13:54
Speaker 1: his work, or how his mother had that hustle selling
13:57
Speaker 1: dinner plates on the side to folks in the neighbor
14:00
Speaker 1: in order to make against me. But how many people
14:03
Speaker 1: could you sell plates to plates? Weren't throwing to feed
14:05
Speaker 1: six kids on the regular, so Bobby Brown's mother upped
14:09
Speaker 1: her hustle game. Ten year old Bobby assumed that the
14:13
Speaker 1: new metal door installed that their Orchard Park Project's apartment
14:17
Speaker 1: was to keep the Jehovah's witnesses out, And he further
14:20
Speaker 1: assumed that the flower his mom kept in the kitchen
14:22
Speaker 1: was actually flower. And it was getting late. His father
14:27
Speaker 1: was still at work and his mother was out with friends.
14:30
Speaker 1: Bobby was starving. He decided to make some fried chicken.
14:34
Speaker 1: He covered the chicken in the flower and then dropped
14:37
Speaker 1: pieces into a hot pan coated an oil, And when
14:40
Speaker 1: he finished cooking, he ate first one bite and then another.
14:45
Speaker 1: Soon a strange feeling came over him his heart. He
14:49
Speaker 1: get a beat a little faster. He took another bite,
14:51
Speaker 1: and the strangeness intensified, and his mind was moving fast,
14:55
Speaker 1: turning over on itself. And then his mother walked through
14:59
Speaker 1: the door and screamed. Bobby hadn't bread at the chicken
15:03
Speaker 1: with flour. He breaded it with his mother's cocaine. This
15:08
Speaker 1: was how Bobby Brown learned that his mother was dealing
15:11
Speaker 1: drugs in Roxbury by cooking chicken as a little kid
15:14
Speaker 1: and unintentionally using the drug as an ingredient. The hustle,
15:20
Speaker 1: the pride, the work. It wasn't without its dangers, just
15:24
Speaker 1: like growing up black and Boston wasn't without its dangers.
15:28
Speaker 1: Boston Pete came around to the Brown's apartment looking for
15:31
Speaker 1: a couple of usual suspects, the kind that Bobby now
15:34
Speaker 1: understood associated with his mom. Bobby's mom didn't want the
15:38
Speaker 1: kids to hear anything, so she took the conversation outside.
15:42
Speaker 1: Bobby watched from the apartment window as his mom dramatically
15:46
Speaker 1: argued with the cops, and then watched in horror as
15:49
Speaker 1: one of the cops lifted his billy club and hit
15:51
Speaker 1: his mom right in the face for what for knowing
15:55
Speaker 1: some other dudes she wasn't holding she was clean, at
15:59
Speaker 1: least in this moment. The police would beat on anyone
16:02
Speaker 1: in Roxbury. Even the mother of six was fucked up,
16:07
Speaker 1: as was Bobby's mom right now, her eyes swelling up
16:10
Speaker 1: as the cobs cuffed her and shoved her into the
16:12
Speaker 1: back of their cruiser. The danger, the violence, It crept closer.
16:17
Speaker 1: There was the night Bobby was out with his best
16:19
Speaker 1: friend Jimmy, not in Roxbury, but in nearby Dorchester board
16:24
Speaker 1: looking for something to do. They spotted a couple of
16:27
Speaker 1: bikes leaned up against a building, no chains, no locks.
16:31
Speaker 1: Bobby grabbed one and Jimmy grabbed the other, and they
16:33
Speaker 1: rode them back to Roxbury, basking in the thrill of it,
16:36
Speaker 1: the thrill of their criminal prowess, until that criminal prowess
16:40
Speaker 1: was challenged by a group of other kids looking to
16:43
Speaker 1: steal the two bikes that Bobby and Jimmy had just stolen.
16:46
Speaker 1: Bobby figured that he and Jimmy could take them, after all,
16:49
Speaker 1: they were scrappy tough. These other kids, though, were vicious,
16:53
Speaker 1: coming in hot with big swings, hard knuckle punches that
16:57
Speaker 1: hurt like hell, and then then pulled the knife. Fuck this.
17:03
Speaker 1: They could have the bikes, but it wasn't about the
17:05
Speaker 1: bikes anymore. These other kids wanted blood, and they got
17:09
Speaker 1: it too. When the one wheelding the knife sliced Jimmy's
17:12
Speaker 1: arm open, Bobby tried to intervene, but the next thust
17:15
Speaker 1: of the knife came too quick. The tip of the
17:18
Speaker 1: blade plunged straight into Jimmy's chest, directly into his heart.
17:22
Speaker 1: Jimmy collapsed, the other kids bolted, Bobby was left watching
17:26
Speaker 1: the life drain out of his best friend's eyes and
17:28
Speaker 1: not being able to do anything about it. Losing his
17:32
Speaker 1: best friend at such a young age had a profound
17:35
Speaker 1: effect on Bobby. It motivated him to get out of Roxbury,
17:39
Speaker 1: out of Boston. But that meant more work. That meant
17:44
Speaker 1: traveling to New York City each weekend, with New Addition,
17:47
Speaker 1: playing shows from midnight to four am every Friday, Saturday
17:51
Speaker 1: and Sunday, and then scrambling back to Boston on an
17:54
Speaker 1: overnight bus to make it to school first thing Monday morning.
17:58
Speaker 1: And that hard work meant more hits. Cool it now,
18:02
Speaker 1: mister telephone man, great songs and those hits, and that
18:06
Speaker 1: attention meant growing up fast, faster that most of the
18:11
Speaker 1: guys in New Edition were ready for. Bobby Brown was
18:14
Speaker 1: the odd man out, increasingly motivated by what he wanted,
18:18
Speaker 1: which was the spotlight a solo career, an opportunity where
18:22
Speaker 1: he was only answering for himself, where he didn't have
18:26
Speaker 1: bandmates concerned about his increasingly hyper sexual dance moves on stage,
18:31
Speaker 1: where he didn't have to get reamed out for showing
18:33
Speaker 1: up later, missing engagements entirely. No one was going to
18:38
Speaker 1: tell Bobby how to do his work. He was going
18:40
Speaker 1: to do it his way, show up when he wanted,
18:43
Speaker 1: dance the way he wanted to dance, dance with whomever
18:47
Speaker 1: he wanted to dance with. Even girls who had other
18:50
Speaker 1: guys on the side, those on again off again romeos,
18:54
Speaker 1: they didn't scare Bobby Brown. He was Bobby Brown, for
18:57
Speaker 1: Christ's sakes, from Orchard Park. He had its. He was
19:00
Speaker 1: three years old. It was all his. So he wasn't
19:04
Speaker 1: going to listen to this chick he was dancing with
19:06
Speaker 1: right now at a block party, the one who was
19:07
Speaker 1: a little bit older than him. She wasn't prison dangerous
19:10
Speaker 1: like his sister's friend back in lock up. She was
19:13
Speaker 1: still dangerous all the scene, and she kept telling Bobby
19:16
Speaker 1: that this guy she was kind of sort of seeing
19:18
Speaker 1: was on his way over and that Bobby should probably split.
19:22
Speaker 1: But Bobby wasn't going anywhere. He kept dancing, and he
19:25
Speaker 1: paid the other dude no mind. That is until the
19:29
Speaker 1: other dude showed up, or rather his gun showed up first.
19:33
Speaker 1: As the first shots rang out, people scattered in every direction.
19:37
Speaker 1: Bobby saw him now the tough guy sometimes boyfriend heading
19:41
Speaker 1: straight forward, led by the muzzle of his gun. Bobby
19:44
Speaker 1: hit the ground running and her boyfriend kept firing, and
19:47
Speaker 1: Bobby's heart pounded in his throat. He gasped for air
19:50
Speaker 1: as he raced down a Rocksbury sidewalk, every muscle on
19:53
Speaker 1: his legs burning, and then there was another burning sensation.
19:58
Speaker 1: He stopped running when he realized he was and he
20:00
Speaker 1: looked down and his legs were shaking. His sweatpants were
20:04
Speaker 1: covered in blood. Then there was a hole in his knee.
20:07
Speaker 1: The bullet had gone in one side and exited cleaning
20:10
Speaker 1: out the other. He limped to a nearby hospital. Doctor
20:14
Speaker 1: sewed him up and sent him on his way. He
20:16
Speaker 1: didn't even tell his mother or his father, and they
20:18
Speaker 1: had their own shit to worry about. Bobby Brown. He
20:22
Speaker 1: had worked to do. We'll be right back after this.
20:31
Speaker 1: We're we're we're getting shot, getting arrested, getting kicked out
20:39
Speaker 1: of a new addition, sleeping with any woman anywhere, including
20:43
Speaker 1: the one he knocked up and who had since given
20:45
Speaker 1: birth to his first child. All these things contributed to
20:49
Speaker 1: Bobby Brown's larger than life image, an image that defined
20:53
Speaker 1: who he was to the public as his solo career
20:56
Speaker 1: was just getting off the ground. He was a bad
20:58
Speaker 1: boy with a badass sophomore record, Don't Be Cruel, and
21:02
Speaker 1: that record was powered by the huge hit My Prerogative,
21:06
Speaker 1: a song that flipped the giant middle finger at everyone,
21:09
Speaker 1: from his boys in New addition to the naysayers who
21:12
Speaker 1: doubted he'd ever amount to anything, not to mention, a
21:15
Speaker 1: song that taught me, in an entire generation of kids,
21:19
Speaker 1: what the word prerogative meant. Bobby knew that not only
21:22
Speaker 1: was it his prerogative to do whatever the hell he
21:24
Speaker 1: wanted to do, but that the public and the people
21:27
Speaker 1: who tried to define you as this or that, they
21:30
Speaker 1: didn't know what the fuck they were talking about. It
21:32
Speaker 1: was impossible for anyone but Bobby Brown to know the
21:35
Speaker 1: real Bobby Brown, at least in Bobby's mind. It was
21:39
Speaker 1: like that with Whitney too, Whitney Houston living in that
21:43
Speaker 1: rarefied air just like Bobby. In the year nineteen eighty nine,
21:48
Speaker 1: both nominees at the Soul Train Awards, where the two
21:51
Speaker 1: met for the first time. Mega Watt's Superstar is standing
21:54
Speaker 1: side by side Bobby in his white silk suit and
21:58
Speaker 1: Whitney in his sparkling beaded dress. Although she had a
22:01
Speaker 1: run of seven number one singles leading out to this
22:04
Speaker 1: right now in nineteen eighty nine, Bobby Brown was it
22:08
Speaker 1: arguably the more dominant cultural and musical force at the moment,
22:12
Speaker 1: a moment in which Whitney Houston was on the receiving
22:14
Speaker 1: end of backlash from the black community for skewing too pop.
22:19
Speaker 1: All that said, Whitney had her own publicly defined image,
22:22
Speaker 1: just like Bobby did. Unlike Bobby, that image was not dangerous.
22:28
Speaker 1: Whitney was America's sweetheart. She was apple pie, and Bobby
22:33
Speaker 1: knew better that beneath that polish facade, in that perfect voice,
22:37
Speaker 1: Whitney Houston was as bad as he was. If he
22:40
Speaker 1: didn't know just how bad when they began dating, he
22:43
Speaker 1: quickly found out. On their wedding day, Bobby went looking
22:46
Speaker 1: for his bride to be hours before the ceremony. His
22:49
Speaker 1: nerves were ramping up along with his sex drive. He
22:51
Speaker 1: wanted one last quickie before they were pronounced man and wife,
22:55
Speaker 1: and he found her behind a closed door, storting a
22:57
Speaker 1: huge line of cocaine. This story about Whitney Houston, America's Sweetheart,
23:03
Speaker 1: lasting rails before her wedding day. Like the story of
23:07
Speaker 1: the Horny Ghost, comes from Bobby's own memoir, which to
23:11
Speaker 1: some is going to run counter to the narrative that
23:14
Speaker 1: Bobby Brown, the so called bad boy in this relationship,
23:17
Speaker 1: was the bad influence on Whitney Houston, not the other
23:19
Speaker 1: way around as Bobby tells it. It's been well established
23:22
Speaker 1: that over the years, Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston descended
23:25
Speaker 1: it into an unhealthy life of hard drug use together,
23:28
Speaker 1: even in front of their own daughter. And for more
23:31
Speaker 1: on that, you can check out the episode we did
23:33
Speaker 1: hear in Disgracing on Whitney Houston. That said, there are
23:37
Speaker 1: plenty of other incidents that weren't speculation, incidents that were
23:41
Speaker 1: caught on tape and now exist online for all to see,
23:44
Speaker 1: incidents that paint a very particular kind of picture of
23:48
Speaker 1: who Bobby Brown was at this very moment. Nineteen ninety four,
23:55
Speaker 1: Bobby Brown's twenty fifth birthday party, two years after Bobby
23:58
Speaker 1: and Whitney tied the knot, one year after their daughter,
24:01
Speaker 1: Bobby Christina, was born. As soon as they step out
24:04
Speaker 1: of the limo, the cameras are flashing, paparazzi calling out
24:08
Speaker 1: Bobby and Whitney's names to try and get the best
24:10
Speaker 1: shot inside the party. The music's loud, the drinks are stiff.
24:15
Speaker 1: The reporters from MTV and other news outlets are pressing
24:17
Speaker 1: the flesh, all jockeying to interview what is now the
24:21
Speaker 1: most famous married couple in the world, the Bad Boy
24:24
Speaker 1: and the Good Girl. One reporter in particular puts a
24:27
Speaker 1: microphone in front of the couple. He says that he
24:29
Speaker 1: heard Bobby's mother was recently offered her own talk show.
24:32
Speaker 1: She's a riot, the reporter says. Bobby furrows his bra
24:36
Speaker 1: Hold up, you want to call my mom a riot?
24:40
Speaker 1: Bobby forms his right hand like a gun, raising it
24:42
Speaker 1: to the reporter's head and pretending to shoot, and the
24:45
Speaker 1: reporter quickly clarifies she's a riot, as in, she's funny.
24:49
Speaker 1: You know, she's a trip. Oh, she's a trip. Bobby says,
24:52
Speaker 1: as if that clarifies it for him, as if that
24:55
Speaker 1: makes it better, But it doesn't. Bobby is clearly offended.
25:00
Speaker 1: This guy doesn't know his mom, doesn't know the first
25:02
Speaker 1: thing about her, and here he is with the fucking
25:05
Speaker 1: balls to stand in front of Bobby while the camera
25:07
Speaker 1: rolls and say that missus Brown is a trip in
25:10
Speaker 1: Bobby's mind, it's such condescending bullshit. Hey, let's the guy
25:14
Speaker 1: know my mom is real, Bobby says, and she's coming
25:17
Speaker 1: from the heart, and if you can't respect that, you
25:20
Speaker 1: shouldn't even be here. As Bobby goes off on the journalist,
25:24
Speaker 1: Whitney just smiles at the camera, looking equal parts embarrassed
25:28
Speaker 1: and wanting to get on with answering her questions, because yes,
25:31
Speaker 1: this is Bobby's birthday party. But the reporter wants to
25:34
Speaker 1: talk with Whitney right now, and Bobby's not having it.
25:37
Speaker 1: He doesn't break the tension, he doesn't say he's just
25:39
Speaker 1: kidding around. Instead, he walks away, pissed, presumably though to
25:44
Speaker 1: cool off, only to return moments later interrupt his wife,
25:48
Speaker 1: put his face right in the camera with a dead series,
25:50
Speaker 1: get the fuck out of here, look, shove the cameraman
25:53
Speaker 1: and announce the interview is over. That outside sense of
25:57
Speaker 1: ego and danger, it's all there in Bobby Brown's body language,
26:02
Speaker 1: things that he had possessed since he was a little
26:04
Speaker 1: kid dancing on Roxbury Street corners. Bobby had the fame,
26:07
Speaker 1: the money, and now add to that the most celebrated
26:10
Speaker 1: singer and one of the most beautiful women in the
26:12
Speaker 1: galaxy on his arm. Bobby Brown didn't want the world
26:15
Speaker 1: to see him as bad. He wanted to be seen
26:18
Speaker 1: as powerful. But when he returned from his honeymoon, a
26:21
Speaker 1: fresh scar visible on Whitney's face made people talk, and
26:25
Speaker 1: back in Boston, he was caught in the crossfire again,
26:29
Speaker 1: literally dodging bullets while witnessing yet another friend suffer a
26:32
Speaker 1: fatal wound. On tour with the Reunited New Edition, a
26:38
Speaker 1: tour in which each member rode on his own bus
26:41
Speaker 1: busses loaded with guns and dope, Bobby was so high
26:44
Speaker 1: that he thought his own wife was trying to kill him.
26:47
Speaker 1: He couldn't point to a specific reason why. The thought
26:50
Speaker 1: just entered his head and it wouldn't leave. He made
26:53
Speaker 1: the bus driver pull over. He ran cocaine in one
26:56
Speaker 1: pocket and a handgun in the other, hopping a fence
26:59
Speaker 1: and tearing ass or a huge field somewhere in the
27:01
Speaker 1: middle of America, running fast and the wind blowing through
27:04
Speaker 1: his years, his wife Whitney yelling from somewhere behind him,
27:08
Speaker 1: and the rest of his New Edition boys yelling. Bobby
27:11
Speaker 1: coming up on a house now an oasis, smack dab
27:14
Speaker 1: in the middle of this field. He made it up
27:16
Speaker 1: the stairs, the front stairs in that house, where a
27:19
Speaker 1: man now opened the front door and stepped onto the porch,
27:21
Speaker 1: giant shotgun in his very capable hands. Get your ass
27:26
Speaker 1: off my property, or I'll blow your fucking head off.
27:31
Speaker 1: The shock of that moment, the aftermath of it, it
27:34
Speaker 1: didn't set Bobby straight. Neither did the stroke he suffered
27:38
Speaker 1: soon after from freebasing so much cocaine. It wasn't until
27:42
Speaker 1: he was sent to jail again in the year two thousand,
27:45
Speaker 1: this time in Florida, this time for violating conditions of
27:48
Speaker 1: paroles stemming from a previous dui that he was forced
27:52
Speaker 1: to clean up. Bobby thought the whole thing was just bullshit,
27:55
Speaker 1: the parole violation. The only reason he was being treated
27:58
Speaker 1: like this was because of who he was, us, Bobby Brown,
28:01
Speaker 1: the bad boy. But the judge's gavel came down and
28:05
Speaker 1: the cop stuffed Bobby and a cruiser to whisk him
28:07
Speaker 1: away for two and a half months in the clink.
28:10
Speaker 1: Sitting there in the back seat, he slowly slid his
28:13
Speaker 1: handcuffed hands down around his ass and under his legs
28:16
Speaker 1: and feet and the cops up front were clueless. He
28:19
Speaker 1: brought his cuffed hands to the zipper of his pants.
28:22
Speaker 1: He quietly undid his fly, and then Bobby Brown pissed
28:28
Speaker 1: all over the inside of the squad car. If a
28:31
Speaker 1: bad boy is what they wanted, a bad boy was
28:35
Speaker 1: what they were gonna get. December two thousand and three,
28:59
Speaker 1: Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston were at home. Bobby was
29:02
Speaker 1: sober California sober, that is, which means he was drunk,
29:06
Speaker 1: as was his wife. And they weren't alone. There was
29:09
Speaker 1: another man, Whitney Stealer. Things had been undeniably dark inside
29:14
Speaker 1: the Brown Houston household as well as out of it,
29:17
Speaker 1: like inside that limousine where Bobby and Whitney once smoke
29:20
Speaker 1: crack with their five year old daughter, Bobby Christina, sitting
29:23
Speaker 1: right next to them. But things were different now, or
29:27
Speaker 1: at least Bobby wanted them to be different. Mostly, he
29:30
Speaker 1: just wanted this other guy out of his house. He
29:33
Speaker 1: didn't know why Whitney was bringing him around. She needed
29:36
Speaker 1: him for dope, sure, but why were they hanging around
29:38
Speaker 1: with this dude. Bobby was not his friend, and Whitney
29:42
Speaker 1: was not this guy's woman. She was Bobby Brown's girl,
29:45
Speaker 1: the number two to his number one. So Bobby grabbed
29:49
Speaker 1: the guy by his shirt and tossed him around, all
29:51
Speaker 1: rag Doll style, The fuck you doing here? The fuck
29:53
Speaker 1: you doing with my family? Bobby felt his rage bubble up,
29:58
Speaker 1: and then he felt his wife's hands on his back,
30:00
Speaker 1: pulling him away before he did need real damage, But
30:03
Speaker 1: Bobby was out of control at this point. Shift faced angry,
30:07
Speaker 1: he spun around, raised his hand and slapped Whitney Houston
30:11
Speaker 1: in the face. It wasn't long until Whitney filed for
30:14
Speaker 1: legal separation and then for divorce. That was her prerogative.
30:19
Speaker 1: Bobby left with the one way ticket to somewhere else,
30:21
Speaker 1: sent a little money in his pocket, no car, no house,
30:25
Speaker 1: no jewelry, leaving it all behind like he left that
30:27
Speaker 1: white Mercedes Benz at the airport behind all those years ago.
30:31
Speaker 1: Such was the mindset of the all powerful and the untouchable.
30:35
Speaker 1: There would be other cars, and there will be other houses,
30:37
Speaker 1: and there was always more work to do and more
30:39
Speaker 1: money to be made. But you can't replace everything, like
30:45
Speaker 1: his Grammy Award, his People's Choice Award, his American Music Awards,
30:50
Speaker 1: all of them. According to Bobby Brown, either thrown out
30:53
Speaker 1: or sold by Whitney's family in the bitter wake of
30:56
Speaker 1: their split. The receipts, as it were, the tangible things
31:00
Speaker 1: that proved he was the most popular entertainer in the
31:02
Speaker 1: world at one time, were now lost to time, and
31:07
Speaker 1: in time, Whitney would tell her side of the story.
31:11
Speaker 1: Two thousand and nine, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Whitney Houston
31:15
Speaker 1: preparing to stage a triumphant comeback, America's sweetheart and the
31:20
Speaker 1: queen of daytime TV. Speaking candidly in a hotly anticipated conversation,
31:25
Speaker 1: huge ratings, bigger revelations, Whitney laid it all out that
31:30
Speaker 1: Bobby Brown was jealous of her success, that something happens
31:33
Speaker 1: to a man, a particular type of man, when a
31:36
Speaker 1: woman has that much control, that much fame, fame on
31:40
Speaker 1: the grandest scale, stoked by the enormous success of the
31:43
Speaker 1: soundtrack to The Bodyguard, her soundtrack the best selling soundtrack
31:47
Speaker 1: of all time by the way, released the year that
31:50
Speaker 1: they were married and three years after Bobby Brown's Don't
31:53
Speaker 1: Be Cruel was on top, but The Bodyguard outsold Don't
31:57
Speaker 1: Be Cruel in Spain's teen times platinum, more than double
32:02
Speaker 1: the numbers that Bobby Brown put up. People would always
32:05
Speaker 1: love that record, Whitney's record, that is, people wouldn't always
32:09
Speaker 1: love Bobby Brown. A few years later, Whitney Houston was dead.
32:17
Speaker 1: Bobby and Whitney's daughter Bobby Christina, She died three years
32:21
Speaker 1: after that, and then one of Bobby's sons, Bobby Brown Junior,
32:25
Speaker 1: died shortly after. Bobby was distraught. It was one thing
32:29
Speaker 1: to lose a former's spouse, but to lose a child,
32:32
Speaker 1: two children, only twenty two and twenty eight years old, respectively,
32:37
Speaker 1: that was unthinkable. So Bobby kept busy. He wrote a memoir,
32:42
Speaker 1: he produced a TV series about his life. He worked
32:46
Speaker 1: hard to ensure that he had some hand in shaping
32:48
Speaker 1: his legacy. That was his job now, because a working
32:52
Speaker 1: man is everything, and no man wants to work so
32:55
Speaker 1: hard only to find in the end that he is
32:58
Speaker 1: a disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgraceland. Disgraceland
33:17
Speaker 1: was created by Yours Truly. It is produced in partnership
33:20
Speaker 1: with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode could be found
33:23
Speaker 1: on the show notes page at disgracelandpod dot com. Subscribe, follow, like, rate,
33:28
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33:35
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33:42
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33:44
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33:54
Speaker 1: rock a world, he m