Every Little Step: My Story (9 page)

The whole tour was mind-boggling, but it brought me immense satisfaction. There was something very gratifying about knowing the whole thing was mine, under my direction, something I created. There was nobody to tell me what to do, when to do it. I had total control of what happened and what I did. I wasn’t heavily into the drugs yet at this point. Mainly we were smoking weed and drinking, and mostly beer. And of course there were lots of girls. Way too many girls.

Some of the encounters could be filed under the category of unexpected. For instance, there was the night with Jessica Hahn. This was a few years after she brought down televangelist Jim Bakker with allegations that he and another preacher had drugged and raped her when she was working as their church secretary at the age of twenty-one. At this point she was ten years older than me, and she was apparently a big fan. She attended one of my shows and came backstage to meet me. And she sure as hell did meet me that night.

There were so many sexual encounters, many of them blur together in my mind. But there are others that I remember as vividly as if they happened yesterday. Sometimes I will turn on the television or go to the movies and I will see one of the women, more than two decades later, and the memories will come flooding back to me.

We also had way too many guns. I’m not talking just
regular handguns, I mean like big semiautomatics. I had all this money around and I guess I was paranoid, but luckily some smart thinking by my security detail kept us from getting into real trouble. One night in St. Louis, we had a major beef with these kids who were talking shit to us. When we got back on the bus, all of a sudden we heard gunshots. We realized we were taking fire—those motherfuckers were shooting up our bus! Crouching down to avoid getting hit, we all ran to get our guns and looked for safe spots to shoot from. We found spots where we could safely fire back at them. But instead of gunshots, it was
click, click, click
. None of the guns had bullets in them. Turns out our head of security had taken all the bullets and hidden them underneath the bus. In retrospect it was a genius move because somebody would have gotten killed that day. But at the time we were pissed as hell. We jumped him and started beating his ass.

Triple B Records

After the enormous success of
Don’t Be Cruel,
I signed a new contract with MCA that was extremely lucrative. As part of the new contract, I got my own record label, where I could develop and produce my own acts. But I didn’t want to do all of that from Los Angeles, which was feeling too confined and incestuous. I wanted to break away and put down roots in a new place. I also saw that when we looked at our royalty reports, 70 percent of the radio revenue was coming from the
South. I realized that our audience was mostly down there. If you wanted to break a new record, you didn’t even have to think about the West or the Northeast. You could do it exclusively by concentrating on the South. So I figured, why not relocate to the hub of the place, Atlanta? This was before Outkast and Jermaine Dupri and the development of the Southern sound. Music-wise, there was nothing in Atlanta when we got there. It was all new, fertile ground. We called our label Triple B Records (my middle name is Barrisford). We also bought a full-fledged recording studio that we called Bosstown Recording, so we could do everything from signing the artists to recording their music to mixing and mastering the final album. It was one-stop packaging.

We put together an impressive collection of artists who we knew were going to make a big splash. We had an incredible vocalist named Dede O’Neal, who eventually wound up being signed by LaFace. My younger sister, Carol, who was a talented rapper by the name of Coop B, was part of our camp. At one point we were working with Usher. We had a vocalist named Harold Travis and a hot rapper by the name of Stylz. One of our most exciting acts was an R & B quartet by the name of Smoothe Sylk—a group that turned out to be the label’s downfall. The guys in Smoothe Sylk kept coming to me asking for money, saying they were broke and needed to make ends meet. We were just a couple of months from the release of their first album and they came back yet again, looking for more cash.

“Dudes, I don’t know what you’re doing with this money, but for the next couple of months you better figure something out. Go get a job at McDonald’s or something, because I’m not advancing you any more money. Y’all need to budget your money or something.”

A few days later, I got a phone call delivering news that I just refused to believe. Two of the guys in Smoothe Sylk had gone out and robbed a bank. They couldn’t wait until the release of their album, which everyone was certain was going to be a big hit. The executives at MCA flipped out. If the Triple B acts were going to be this risky, they had serious doubts about the entire venture. In the end, the label put out just two albums—a compilation album featuring all of the artists called
B. Brown Posse
and an album of remixes of some of my songs called
Remixes in the Key of B
.

When I look back on that time now, I feel a certain amount of regret that I didn’t handle things differently. I dropped so many balls and it affected many other lives. I immaturely walked away from the business. There was so much amazing music that we recorded that is just sitting in the vault—actually in my garage. Incredible music that no one has ever heard, that could have made a splash in the industry. In retrospect I didn’t have the right people working in a management capacity with the label and clearly I wasn’t invested enough. Since the whole venture was mine, I’m prepared to take the brunt of the blame. My sister was an extremely talented artist who should have had a long ca
reer. The same with the rapper Stylz and the vocalist Dede O’Neal. They were all depending on me and I let them down. I shouldn’t have allowed them to miss out just because I fell in love and was negligent. We made great, timeless music together—it wasn’t bullshit. I had the raw tools to build a real dynasty, but I didn’t have the mind-set. I was the first artist to create a personal label and have it backed by a major. Now every other artist does it.

I had a lot of great times in that Atlanta recording studio. I produced and appeared on two songs from Shaquille O’Neal’s third album,
You Can’t Stop the Reign
. Shaq’s raps were written by Peter Gunz and we had the best time working on his music. Shaq is a beast. The sessions were so much fun, I can’t help but smile when I look back on them.

I always made sure there were plenty of beautiful, sexy women around the Bosstown studios. And they were eager to make sure the artists coming through there were comfortable and relaxed. They were a hell of a welcoming party.

When I say that my Atlanta mansion was the scene of a three-year-long party, I’m not exaggerating. It was like Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Mansion acquired feet and scurried down from California to Atlanta. One of the first houses we were shown by our Atlanta real estate agent was this incredible place that had previously been owned by Mike Thevis, a prolific pornographer who in the 1970s reportedly controlled 40 percent of the American market. Books, magazines, movies, X-rated theaters, adult bookstores, automated
peepshows—Thevis lorded over them all. Known as the “Scarface of Porn,” Thevis eventually branched out into the music business, with several Atlanta-based labels. His annual income at one time was estimated at $100 million. Eventually, though, the government caught up to him, first convicting him of distributing pornography, then in 1980 he was found guilty of murdering two of his former associates.

From the looks of it, he’d had to leave this fourteen-thousand-square-foot Tudor mansion in a hurry because many of his belongings had been left behind. I fell in love with the place right away. It was completed in 1972 and originally called Lions Gate, with eighteen sprawling acres behind a grand wrought iron entrance on top of a hill overlooking the magnificent grounds. There was an entire pool complex. There were even stables, not that I cared about horses.

Outside the home were five thousand square feet of patio and terrace areas accessible from all the rooms on the first floor. Inside was a world-class gourmet kitchen, seven bedrooms, six bathrooms and three powder rooms. This joint was crazy. As a matter of fact, I was told that it was the largest home built in the United States in 1972 when it was completed by Atlanta architect Robert Green.

I quickly went to work to put in my own touches. I had windows installed with portraits of me made out of stained glass. We got rid of the murals of angels and demons Thevis had painted on the walls and ceilings. A taxi driver told my brother that he used to drop people off at the house quite
frequently and once saw a bunch of men having sex with young women on the lawn. Well, the taxi driver actually said “raping” women on the lawn.

In my hands, the house took on a younger feel, with my mother in charge of the redecoration. We put in a gold staircase that led to big gold doors outside my bedroom. We installed a giant fish tank that went under the staircase all the way up to the second floor. There were always other people in the house with me—some of my boys actually lived there. Atlanta is a big strip-club town, so many of the local strippers would get off work and come to my house to spend their days. There would be beautiful big-booty strippers walking around all the time, but clothed, because my son and nephews were often there too. One of the house’s most memorable features was the pool—it was all black on the bottom, at one end about twenty feet deep, with a bridge crossing over it, giving it the feel of a deep lagoon. To this day it remains one of the baddest pools I’ve ever seen.

I gave my son Landon a couple of over-the-top birthday parties there in the early 1990s. For one of them, I had the real Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles come. I’m talking the actual dudes from the movies, wearing their actual costumes. I don’t remember at all how much this cost, but it must have been a small fortune. At the time, I certainly wasn’t thinking about the pain of writing a check for something like that. Because MCA owned Universal Studios it was easy for me to get the real Ninja Turtles because it was a Universal franchise.
You might ask whether it was necessary to go all out and get the real Ninja Turtles, but my son would have known if they were Turtle impersonators.

A year or so before the Turtles birthday, I dressed up as Batman for his party. He took one look at me and was like, “Uh, you’re not Batman, you’re my dad.”

“No, I’m not your father, I am Batman,” I said, trying to disguise my voice.

I then ran into the house and had my brother come out with the outfit on while I strolled out in regular clothes to stand next to Landon.

“Dad! Now that’s Uncle Tommy!”

I couldn’t fool his ass to save my life, so I figured I needed the real Ninja Turtles.

Despite all the fun we had down in Atlanta, I sensed that a lot of evil shit had gone down in the house while Thevis lived there. To this day I believe that house was haunted. Pretty soon it was a generally accepted fact among my family and friends that there were supernatural presences there. Some of the ghosts were definitely upset. We often would see white women walk down the hallway. People would bust out of their rooms, screaming, “Did you see that?!”

One memorable night, one of the ghosts descended from the ceiling and had sex with me. After you stop laughing, I need you to hear what I’m saying because I’m not making this up. And let me add this: this was before I ever touched any drug besides weed and alcohol. I don’t think anybody
can drink enough alcohol to make them think they are actually having sex with a ghost. In my bedroom I had a big round bed with a mirrored ceiling looming above. I always slept in the nude, so one night I woke up to the sensation of a woman on top of me. I looked up and in the mirrors I could actually see a white woman straddling me on the bed. The sensation felt exactly like sex—I could feel my penis inside of her and everything. It was not a dream; I was definitely awake when it was happening. All of a sudden, she was gone—leaving me alone and incredibly excited and terrified at the same time.

The entire time I was in the house, Thevis’s brother kept on us about selling the place back to him. He approached us so often that we became suspicious there was a stash of money hidden somewhere. That feeling was exacerbated by the layout of the basement, where Thevis had constructed a maze of little rooms and compartments separated by cinder blocks. At one point we had security crawl the entire length of the basement, which was about the size of half a football field, to see if they could find anything. But they never did.

While I lived in that house, I also experienced a scary incident of extreme racism. It was a real welcome to Georgia. One night we heard a great deal of commotion. When we looked out the door we were shocked to see a cross burning in my front yard. A bunch of us went running outside—me, my nephews, our security guys. We saw a couple of pickup trucks screeching away. One of the security guys squeezed
off a couple of shots but didn’t hit anything. Then we saw that one of the trucks wasn’t starting. The white guy behind the wheel had a terrified look on his face as we ran toward him. We broke his window and I reached inside to punch him in the face. In the process I gashed my forearm and wrist on the broken glass—I still have the scars from the incident.

We dragged this guy out of the truck and proceeded to beat his ass, punching him and kicking him while he moaned in pain and tried to block the blows. There was no sign of the rest of them; they had left him there. After we were done with him, we put him back in his truck, got it started and parked it right outside my gate. Then we called the police and told them what happened. When they arrived, they asked if we wanted to press charges and make a report.

“No, he got exactly what he deserved,” I said. “He should go back and tell the rest of them.”

As my star was shining bright with the success of
Don’t Be Cruel,
I began an intoxicating, whirlwind relationship with the beautiful, sexy Janet Jackson. Talk about the benefits of fame. This was a couple of years after Janet shook up the music world with her album
Control
. The awesome
Rhythm Nation
album would come a year later, in late 1989.
Don’t Be Cruel
was the top-selling album in the country in 1989;
Rhythm Nation
would be the top-selling album of 1990.

Of course I had met Janet a few years earlier when New Edition was running around her brother’s house. I had had a crush on her for years, so it was exciting as hell when I discovered that she was also attracted to me. Janet gave off this image of being all sweet and innocent, but when it was just the two of us she could be wild and uninhibited. She was nearly three years older than me, but the age difference
didn’t seem to matter much. We were young, horny and extremely taken with each other. Nature didn’t need a whole lot of help in getting us in bed.

One vivid memory I will always have is of one of the times we spent the night together at the Le Dufy Hotel, a small luxury spot in West Hollywood. Janet was trying to leave and I didn’t want her to go. So when she tried to pull off in her car, I playfully jumped on top of the hood. But as she flashed me that blinding smile, she kept driving the car. Her smile that day was incredible, sexy, sweet, a smile I fell in love with. I think the whole world fell in love with it. A few years later, director John Singleton used her smile as the final image we saw in the movie
Poetic Justice
.

Janet kept slowly driving the car through the garage with me on the hood, daring me to risk staying on when she hit the street. She would stop, hit the gas pedal, and then drive a little bit more. It was a really nice moment. I rode on that hood until just before the car emerged from the garage. If my memory is correct this was one of the last times we were together and it was just pure fun.

Because Janet was already with Rene Elizondo Jr., the guy who would eventually become her husband, Janet and I were sneaking around a lot, with her friends helping us rendezvous in different places. We would meet at one of her friends’ house, or her friends would bring her to meet me at a hotel. It was difficult, but I took whatever I could get of her time.

Janet didn’t drink, she didn’t smoke. She didn’t have any of those vices. She would curse sometimes, but that was all. When we were together, we did more laughing, kissing and talking than anything else. I was really into her. I think I was in love with her before I even met her. In fact, I went on TV and told the world that I was in love with her and wanted to be with her for the rest of my life.

One of our favorite dates was meeting at this Häagen-Dazs ice cream shop off Ventura Boulevard. We both really liked strawberry ice cream, so we would get our cones, sit down in a corner and giggle together. In a lot of ways, it felt like high school dating. Or what I imagined high school dating was like. And we weren’t all that much older than high school students. Since neither one of us actually went to high school, maybe this was our way of having those types of regular adolescent experiences—even though we were two of the biggest stars in the music business.

This was back in the days when you were allowed to talk on the phone while you were driving, so when we were in our cars we would call each other. Of course our phones were those huge, clunky gray bricks. Remember those?

I was so taken with Janet that I bought her a car for her twenty-third birthday on May 16, 1989. It was a white Jaguar with this gorgeous blue interior. And to add a touch of class, I put an incredibly cute little white chow puppy inside the car. Janet was blown away by the present—but she wouldn’t accept. She was still with Rene, so she couldn’t be coming
home out of the blue with a brand-new car
and
a brand-new dog. I guess I hadn’t thought it out very well. So I wound up keeping the car and the damn dog.

One of the biggest challenges Janet and I faced, in addition to her relationship with Rene, was the fact that we were both so unbelievably busy. I was in the middle of touring for
Don’t Be Cruel,
and she was working on what would become
Rhythm Nation,
so we just didn’t have much time together, and it was inevitable that things would come to an end. Her friends were telling me she wanted to leave Rene so that she could be with me, but it was hard for her because of her family. It wasn’t until a few months later that I found out what that really meant.

When Janet and I officially broke up, it was quite an ugly scene. We were together again at the Le Dufy Hotel when it happened. We were lying together in bed after having sex—as it turned out, for the last time. The talk turned serious. Janet told me she loved me, but she wasn’t “in love” with me. Her friends had already told me that her father didn’t want her to be with a black man. Then Janet confirmed this.

“Yeah, my father won’t allow me to be with a black man,” she said.

I couldn’t believe it. What kind of woman was she, a black woman allowing her father to make such a crazy ultimatum? I exploded. Cursing the whole time, I pulled her out of the bed and pushed her out of the room, naked. She screamed when she realized what I was doing. Just before I
slammed the door, I saw the shock on her face. She was in the hall without a stitch of clothing. The small part of me that was thinking rationally realized I couldn’t do that to her. I mean, this was Janet Jackson. So I opened up the door again and threw a sheet out at her.

If she couldn’t be with a black man, then she could get the fuck out of my room.

I was stunned that Janet was so weak, letting someone else control her life like that—never mind succumbing to some self-hating racist shit. How ironic that she had just blown up with an album called
Control
. Here I am, one of the most successful artists in the business, swimming in millions of dollars, and you can’t be with me? Because of your father? Who’s
really
in control here? It made no sense. I was devastated and confused.

I was so hurt by Janet’s rejection that I went in even harder after that, having sex with any woman in my vicinity who was interested. My dancers were fair game, as were many other women in Hollywood. This is when I really started messing around with the beautiful actress LisaRaye McCoy, who was trying to get her career off the ground and a few years later would hit it big in Ice Cube’s movie
The Players Club
. I was also seeing a lot of one of my dancers, Shane. I admit it now: I was a fiend.

But then I began a relationship that would not only change my life but also shake the entire music industry to its core.

Whitney

So many words have been written about my marriage to this woman, so many people on the outside wildly speculating about things they didn’t know anything about, that I almost feel like I need to draw some type of diagram refuting every crazy rumor that has circulated about us over the years. But instead of focusing on the crazy rumors, I will just give you the details of our incredible love story and let you see how much we were truly made for each other, how much genuine affection flowed through our relationship and our household, how much most of the stuff in the gossip rags was pure bullshit.

It all started at the Soul Train Music Awards in April 1989, at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. That was the first time I ever met Whitney Elizabeth Houston. “Don’t Be Cruel” had been nominated for Soul Train’s Best R & B/Urban Contemporary Song of the Year, and the album was nominated for Best R & B/Urban Contemporary Album of the Year, while “My Prerogative” was nominated for Best R & B/Urban Contemporary Single by a Male. (I won Album of the Year but lost Song of the Year to Anita Baker’s “Giving You the Best That I Got” and lost Best R & B Single by a Male to Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror.”) I also performed that year, so I was busy getting up and down to go all night.

As I sat there in the audience before my performance, someone bumped against the back of my head. It was Whit
ney, but I didn’t say anything. She was speaking to the Winans, who were sitting behind me. Then she did it again, like two more times. I got aggravated, so I finally turned around.

“Excuse me,” I said.

No response from her.

“Excuse me,” I repeated.

Still no response.

What the hell?

Her back was to me, so I tapped her. She turned around.
Slowly.

“You keep hitting me in the head,” I said.

“I know,” she responded.

With those two words, she changed everything. I turned back around with her words ringing in my ears.
What just happened?

But I had to perform, so I pushed it aside. As I walked away, she was sitting on the end of the aisle and just staring at me. I stared back at her. We kept eyeballing each other until I went backstage for my performance.

I stepped out and did my thing onstage, bringing my usual energy and intricate choreography. Ironically I was introduced by Dionne Warwick, who was Whitney’s aunt. I was wearing a cream-colored linen pinstripe suit with a long flowing jacket that tied around the waist like a robe. At one point I took off the jacket and threw it to the side.

Whitney told one of her friends, “Go grab his jacket!”

So at the end of my performance the friend snatched
my jacket. When I came off the stage, I was looking for it but didn’t see it. By this time Whitney had come backstage. When I saw her, she was holding the jacket in her hand.

“Can I keep it?” she asked with that sly Whitney smile.

“All right,” I said. While it was a necessary part of the suit, I didn’t think I would ever wear that suit again. “You can have it.”

It was clear that something was happening. We exchanged information. This was still 1989, so that meant home phone numbers.

One day a week or so later I got inspired and called her.

“If I asked you to go out with me, would you say yes?” I asked her. It wasn’t the slickest line, but it did have its charm.

“Hell yeah!” she said.

And with those words, we began one of the most intense, crazy, passionate relationships the world has ever seen. We shared some mind-blowingly romantic days and nights around the globe; sometimes I’d wake up in some exotic location lying next to one of the most beautiful women in the world and I knew I was living in some kind of fairy tale.

I have incredible memories of our life together that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. One of our favorite spots was Jamaica. We would hang out in our lovely villa, smoking some powerful ganja and eating delicious jerk chicken day and night. If you’ve ever had jerk chicken, prepared by Jamaicans who know what they’re doing, you’ll
immediately understand how you could become obsessed with the stuff.

The Bahamas was another spot that we frequented. We were part of the celebrity contingent that opened the Atlantis resort in 1998, so we always had a soft spot for that magical place. We had close friends there, so we’d enjoy hanging out with them and smoking weed together.

But of course our fairy tale couldn’t be sustained forever.

Even while I was in it, it would feel like those fifteen years of our lives flew by in a blur.

At the time Whitney and I started seeing each other, I was the hot guy in the industry. Women were talking; word was getting around about me. The way I danced, the way I moved, women wondered if I brought that same freakiness and those same moves to the bedroom. They were curious to find out if the myth was true. So in my mind, Whitney was just putting in her bid.

I should point out that I was still seeing Janet Jackson when Whitney asked for my jacket. One minute I was rolling around with the industry’s reigning sex symbol, the next minute I was in love with its undeniable queen. Janet apparently had been doing some talking as well: I found out she was telling her friends how great I was in bed. Our world was so small, once the grapevine was buzzing word zipped through in a hurry.

I thought Whitney was incredibly beautiful, talented and sexy, but at the time I didn’t consider her to be my “type.” I
didn’t really like tall, slim girls. I liked them short and thick. Like Janet. But there was something that happened when Whitney and I were together. We just clicked. We went out on a date and we found out we both smoked Newports. And she wasn’t afraid to smoke around me. I couldn’t smoke around Janet. Actually I chose not to smoke. I didn’t want Janet to know I smoked cigarettes. When I went out with Whitney and she pulled out a Newport, I was like,
Oh damn! Okay!

Whitney and I had our first date at a cute little restaurant in LA, and then we wound up back at the Hotel Bel-Air. When I walked through the door of her hotel suite, all I could smell was her perfume filling up the room. It was a special perfume that she had imported from Paris and it was intoxicating. When I smelled it, I thought of sunshine and vanilla and all things pretty. She would wear that scent for all the years I knew her. It was her signature. Probably everybody who was close to her will associate that smell with Whitney for the rest of their lives—me included.

When I got to the suite, Whitney wasn’t in the living room, but her scent certainly was. I breathed deeply, taking it all in. I was able to take a step back at that moment and consider the craziness of the situation—the fact that I had just stepped into the private hotel suite of this American goddess.

Let me give some perspective on who Whitney was in 1989: She had already become the biggest female pop star in the world by then, at age twenty-five. She had had seven con
secutive number one singles on the
Billboard
charts. She had already won two Grammy Awards, and her first two albums were well on their way to selling forty-five million copies between them. Yes, forty-five million. As far as black female entertainers go, there wasn’t a bigger star in the hemisphere. And only a handful of white performers were as big as her.