Justin Bieber (10 page)

My first date has been sort of mythologized as “Bieber’s Dating Disaster.” I took her to King’s, a buffet restaurant. Yes, I wore a white shirt. Yes, I got spaghetti. No, this was not the brightest idea. But it wasn’t a big trauma, though. This girl was a friend, and she’s pretty cool. We laughed about it and, all things considered, while it wasn’t one of my smoothest dating experiences, it gave us both a funny story to tell and it was a good starter date for me. I was a lot more nervous about that date than I ever was about performing on stage, but, once it was over with, I was comfortable with the idea of going out with other girls and just having fun. Seriously, if the worst thing that ever happened to a person on a date was getting a stain on your shirt... quit cryin’. That’s nothing.

A lot of the tourists out in front of the Stratford Theatre were armed with video cameras, not surprisingly, and, pretty soon, a few videos of me busking showed up on YouTube. When I was searching around for them, I happened to click on one of Mom’s videos from the Stratford Star.

“Geez, Mom, how many times did you and Grandma look at this video?” I said. “There’s like... whoa...”

The counter showed dozens of comments:

Crazy. The busking videos had racked up hundreds of hits as well, with a similar supply of comments. As summer went on, hundreds turned to thousands. Mom started getting weird calls from people we didn’t know.

“Does Justin have an agent?”

“I’d like to talk to you about being Justin’s manager.”

We didn’t get all excited about this, because Mom assumed that these people were con men – or worse. She got an email from a producer for the TV show
Maury
(which used to be called
The Maury Povich Show),
but I didn’t even know what his show was about.

“I think they have all kinds of crackpots on that show,” Grandma said. “Or they have people on and do paternity tests to determine who’s a baby’s father.”

Yikes! We definitely weren’t interested in
that
one.

One day, she got a call from the school district. A guy named Scooter Braun had called them looking for this kid from Stratford.

“I’m very skeptical of anyone in the music industry,” said Mom. “I wish they’d leave him alone.”

They gave her Scooter’s phone number, but she didn’t call him back. So Scooter began calling around to people in the area, trying to find us. He was so persistent that my mom agreed to call him back from a blocked number to hear him out.

“Please, listen to me for just a minute, Pattie,” Scooter said. “And then, if you don’t want to hear from me again, you won’t have to. I just want to say I see something really special in your son. And I see a lot of myself in him, except when I was that age I had no talent. I think I can help him.”

The fact that Mom didn’t immediately hang up got me thinking. Maybe this is for real. Maybe this is how it starts. I mean, when you’re singing in the shower, pretending to be a rock star, you’re not actually thinking about how that happens. Scooter definitely had me interested, but what he was talking about sounded like the plot of a movie, not something that happens to a real guy in real life. But Scooter’s own life kind of sounded like a movie.

“So whose career are you building now?” Mom asked, ready to Google it and call him out if he tried to BS her.

“I just signed a rapper named Asher Roth. He’s just getting started, but we’ve got big plans and I’m excited about his opportunities. I guess, Pattie, the biggest thing you’ve got to know about me, is that I want to make sure your son never has any ‘what ifs?’”

Scooter ended up winning some points with her over the course of a long conversation. He gave her a long list of impressive references and they just ended up talking about family and morals for about two hours. He seemed like a good guy. Mom said she’d think about it, but she warned me not to get my hopes up.

By this time the YouTube views were up into tens of thousands. One video had been viewed over 72,000 times and had multiple “honors,” which show up when the video is generating a lot of interest. School started in the fall, and, during morning announcements one day, they played a montage of my YouTube videos, which had come to their attention because of Scooter’s original phone call. I was still keeping that as sort of a secret identity as far as school was concerned. Kids at school had no idea I did music. They didn’t hang out at the tourist places where I was busking. I was almost thirteen and still waiting for a growth spurt. If people knew me at all, they knew me as an athlete. Some of them thought it was their job to put me in my place, and I had a sinking feeling this video montage
thing was going to make them even tougher on me.

When Mom finally let me talk to Scooter on the phone, I was like, “Dude, why did you do that? That was totally embarrassing. Don’t you know eighth-graders eat their wounded? I don’t need that kind of exposure.”

Scooter laughed, which made me laugh too. After an hour or so, we were talking as if we’d known each other for years. We really are a lot alike in many ways, one of the most important being that we like a lot of the same music.

“Justin,” he said, “I’m really excited to talk to you. I’ve spoken to your mom and it looks like she’s going to allow me to fly you down to Atlanta on your first flight ever. When you get down here we’ll see if you can beat me in HORSE like you claim.” We’ve been playing HORSE ever since.

“No can do,” I told him. “We’re going to Disney World. I’ve been saving for the tickets. It’s our first vacation, and I’m paying for it.”

He kept working on us, and Mom and I talked it over til late at night.

“This might be an incredible opportunity, Mom. I don’t want to screw it up.”

“If this is what you want to do...” she nodded, “let’s go to Atlanta. Disney World will still be there when we get back.”

Mom and I boarded our first ever airplane flight in the fall of 2007. We left the ground, went up into the sky. It was every bit as awesome as I’d always thought it would be. All my life I’d been seeing airplanes up in the air, but, when I was a little kid, I thought that was for rich people. I knew it wasn’t totally impossible, but people like me and my mom were hardwired to keep our feet on the ground. I guess I saw the music business in kind of the same way. I saw people like Beyoncé, Usher and Justin Timberlake way up there in the stars. Was it even possible that I could do what they do? Scooter seemed to think so, and I wanted to believe it but we kept our feet on the ground. I knew better than to go running my mouth around school until I knew I had something real to talk about. Plus the disappointment of it not becoming real would have been too harsh for me.

When we landed in Atlanta, Scooter showed up to get us at the airport, driving a purple Mercedes. With rims.

I saw it and said, “Sweet!”

Mom just shook her head. Scooter got out of the car and surprised us with a big hug before he threw our bags in the trunk.

“What’s up, guys? I’m Scooter.”

“Glad to meet you. I’m Justin.”

“Nice wheels,” said Mom.

“This is the first car I ever bought myself,” he told us. “Paid cash for it back in my party days. I’m a different person now. In a very different line of work. But I still enjoy the car.”

“It’s crazy,” I said. “How’s the stereo system?”

“Deafening,” said Scooter.

“Crank it!”

He cranked up the stereo, and I started singing along with Rihanna and Jay-Z on “Umbrella.” Then Mom started singing along, and pretty soon we were all singing and laughing. Scooter was clowning around, doing his Mike Tyson voice and his Arnold Schwarzenegger voice. We just hit it off right away. Mom couldn’t believe it. She was like, “No one is ever goofy like this with us.”

“If it’s okay with you guys, I’m going to head over to Jermaine Dupri’s studio,” Scooter said.

“That’s definitely okay,” I replied. “That is sick.”

I knew Jermaine Dupri was big time. Back in the day, he’d launched some extremely successful young performers – rappers Kris Kross, Da Brat and Lil Bow Wow – and since then he’d worked with Mariah Carey, Luther Vandross and Mom’s old crushes, Boyz II Men.

“This is just a friendly visit, okay?” Scooter said. “We’re just there to hang out and play some video games. I don’t want you to sing for them yet. The plan is to let them get to know you, then show them the videos, then we’ll work together on something for
you to sing for them. You’re not there to audition, understand?”

“I got it.”

We pulled into the parking lot of the private studio, just ahead of a black Range Rover. The driver got out, and my jaw practically dropped to the floor.

“Oh my God! Is that Usher?”

It was the same feeling I had when the airplane took off. I was up in the sky now. I was up there among the stars! It was just nuts, I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t wait to see the faces on Chaz and Ryan when I told them I was chillin’ out with Usher. Before Scooter could stop me, I was out of the car and across the parking lot.

“Hey, Usher! Hey, man! Oh, man, I love you. Can I sing for you?”

“Nah, little buddy, it’s cold out here,” said Usher. “Let’s just go inside.”