I never doubted myself, and I thought if I'm going to do it, I've just got to work hard."Īnd he did work hard, phenomenally so. I was never afraid to take those steps or cross those boundaries of trying to be equal to those guys. "I drew a lot of inspiration from the Ginuwines, the Ushers, the Michael Jacksons, the James Browns, Sam Cooke. It's all good.")īy 12, he knew he wanted to be a singer. But most women won't have any complaints if they've been with me. You can be the best at it." (Now 24, he doesn't want to say how many women he's slept with: "But you know how Prince had a lot of girls back in the day? Prince was, like, the guy. So, at eight, being able to do it, it kind of preps you for the long run, so you can be a beast at it. "By that point, we were already kind of like hot to trot, you know what I'm saying? Like, girls, we weren't afraid to talk to them I wasn't afraid. "It's different in the country." Brown grew up with a great gang of boy cousins, and they watched so much porn that he was raring to go. He lost his virginity when he was eight years old, to a local girl who was 14 or 15. But I had a fun childhood, went to regular school." My mom told me as a youngster I was always intellectual, like as far as being able to adapt fast and quick.
CHRIS BROWN ALL BACK HOW TO
What's his earliest memory? "I remember my kindergarten teacher made me count pennies and see how much did it add up to, and then I just remember her telling my mom, 'He's a smart kid.' When I was three, I remember being at a daycare centre and having to stay in a room with a bunch of little kids my age, but I just felt like, OK, I know what I'm doing, I know how to unlock the gate, I know how to get out. I ask him to tell me a bit about his childhood. His parents divorced when he was seven, and before long he and his sister and mother were living with her new husband in a trailer park, where in the past he has described lying in bed listening to his stepfather beat his mother. When Brown was two, he began copying Michael Jackson's dance moves, and was soon singing in his church choir and competing in local talent shows. His mother worked in a daycare facility, his father as a corrections officer in a local prison, and they had one other child, his older sister.
By the time I leave, all I can say with certainty is that Brown is a stranger to the concepts of modesty and consistency.īrown was born in 1989 in a small Virginia town called Tappahannock, with a population of just 2,000. Unfortunately he's at his least coherent when discussing the former, and at his most contradictory on the latter.
The first point he makes several times is that his new album will appeal to everyone the second is that he is a changed man who's grown up and calmed down. Or perhaps he's decided on two central points he wants to make, and figures everything else is irrelevant. I don't wear baggy any more."Ī lot of the time, his answers bear little, if any, relation to my questions. Because back then our T-shirts would be down by the knees, baggy jeans, maybe some Timberlands on. When I ask what his 14-year-old self would have thought, had he been shown a snapshot of his life today and seen all that would happen in the coming decade, Brown says, "Honestly, I probably would have laughed at my clothing. It's not that he is fiercely private – in fact, after I ask when he lost his virginity, he seems to warm to me – but rather just indisposed to examine anything too closely. What follows for the next hour could not exactly be called a conversation. Yeah." He can't think of anything he's bad at, apart from "just being able to relax and sleep". You know, whether it be personal or musical, I just think I'm a walking art piece, just a ball of creativity." Were it not for what he refers to as "the incident with Rihanna", he would now be "bigger than life. You can take my life story or scenarios or songs and relate to them, and apply them to your everyday life. "Well, I would say I'm an inspirational guidelines book. What would he say? As if registering my presence for the first time, he pauses, almost glances across, smiles – "That's a good question" – and considers it carefully in silence. Here is a clean slate: his chance to define himself, to explain from scratch who he is and what he does. He's talking about his album, but making no sense, so I suggest we pretend I've just landed from Mars and know nothing about him. So much has been written about Brown, and so much of it ugly, that I think, well, who could blame him for being wary? Before long, I begin to suspect he's actually just bored. Patrick Fraser Photograph: Patrick Fraser for the Guardian