Bobby Brown biography

Solo Career

In December 1986, Brown released his first solo album, King of Stage. While the album sold modestly and scored one major hit with the ballad "Girlfriend," it failed to generate the level of excitement and acclaim for which Brown had hoped. Seeking to reinvent himself as an adult artist, Brown spent the next two years working closely with the acclaimed R&B songwriters and producers Teddy Riley,

L.A. Reid and Babyface. The result of their collaboration, released in the summer of 1988, was a radically new R&B album called Don't Be Cruel that took the music world by storm, selling seven million copies on the way to becoming the bestselling album of the year. Brown's high-powered, sexually charged music and live performances earned him comparisons to his childhood idol Michael Jackson. In 1990, Brown recorded "On Our Own," the smash-hit theme song for the movie Ghostbusters II, and in 1992 he released his third album, Bobby, featuring the singles "Humpin' Around" and "Good Enough."

Personal Life

However, just as Brown reached the summit of his popularity in the late 1980s and early 1990s, his personal life began to spiral out of control. Tabloids reported obsessively on Brown's hard-partying lifestyle—his heavy drinking, womanizing and drug abuse. In the summer of 1992, Brown married fellow pop star Whitney Houston in one of the most highly publicized celebrity weddings in history. However, theirs was a tumultuous relationship from the start. They both drank heavily and became addicted to marijuana and cocaine. Brown was arrested several times throughout the 1990s for drug use and drunk driving, and rumors of marital infidelity and domestic violence became a ubiquitous presence in the tabloids for years on end. During his 15 years of marriage to Houston, Brown produced only one album, 1997's Forever, which was preformed poorly commercially, and eventually Brown became more famous as Whitney Houston's abusive husband than as an artist in his own right. Brown and Houston divorced in 2007. Soon after, Brown began dating a woman named Alicia Etheridge. They have been engaged since 2010, and they have a child together, a son named Cassius.

In many respects, Bobby Brown's life reads like a classic cautionary tale about the perils of fame and fortune. For several years from the late 1980s to the early 1990s, he was one of the most popular entertainers alive, a young man many hailed as the second coming of Michael Jackson. Nevertheless, today Brown's name may be more closely associated with drugs and his troubled relationship with Whitney Houston than with his music. Brown's life may yet become a tale of redemption, however; drug-free after years of therapy, he released a single, "Get Out the Way," in early 2011. "I'm doing wonderful," Brown said. "I'm just moving forward with my life and trying to stay positive at all times."