Justin Bieber (13 page)

When Usher talks to you one on one, he speaks very quietly, but he’s very intense and his eyes never break away from yours. When he talked to me and Mom, he spoke with a lot of passion and made a lot of sense.

“If you’re an astronaut going to the moon, there’s not a whole lot of people in the world with whom you can share that experience. Well, I’m a fellow astronaut. I’ve been to the moon. I can talk you up and get you back down safely. The beautiful part of all this is you don’t get a chance to see it while you’re in it. Now I actually get a chance to step back and watch it all happen again. Those incredible moments on stage... Even the obstacles, it’ll be a pleasure to watch, even though it’s agonizing, you know. But I can be more helpful because I’ve experienced that. Being the entertainer I am, I stand on the shoulders of giants that basically were trailblazers. And all of my experiences, I want to share. All my knowledge. I want to share it with you and help you make this moment happen.”

His words spoke to me, and I knew then that I’d found a friend for life. We made the decision to go forward with Usher, and I’ve never doubted it for a second. I’m the luckiest guy on earth to have him as my wingman.

Scooter and Usher formed a partnership to navigate my career, and that seemed like a perfect idea. There’s a lot Scooter can tell me, and I trust him, but he doesn’t know what it’s like for me dealing with living in the spotlight the way Usher does. They’re like tag-team wrestlers, only instead of bashing me over the head with folding chairs they make me drink lots of water.

When Usher talks, people listen. He called the guy who’d given him his start, L.A. Reid, CEO of Island Def Jam Music Group. This is the music-industry legend who launched Mariah Carey, Pink, Avril Lavigne, TLC, Outkast, Toni Braxton and a whole lot of other Grammy winners and multi-platinum mega-artists. The dude is a beast. In April 2008, Mom and I met Scooter and Usher in New York City for what I knew might be one of the most important moments of my life. Getting signed to a record deal at Island Def Jam – that was the Holy Grail. We’d really be on our way. I couldn’t let myself think about it too much or I’d have been totally psyched out.

I’d seen the movie
August Rush
a few days earlier and loved that part where the kid is playing that crazy slap-style guitar with the guitar lying down flat, and he’s wailing on it like it’s a guitar and drums and piano all at once. (Check it out on YouTube. It’s sick.) I channeled all my nervous energy into figuring out how to do it. The morning of the meeting, I couldn’t keep still. I was slamming away on that slap-style guitar, and Scooter shot a video of me so we could throw it up on YouTube and share it with my fans.

In the car on the way to the meeting, I was still slapping and drumming on my lap, humming, making bad jokes, driving Mom crazy. Finally we were walking into L.A. Reid’s office with
Chris Hicks from Def Jam, a man who was to have a big part to play in shaping my career and who has supported me every step of the way. L.A.’s office was like a cathedral – if a cathedral had cigars on the table. The walls were covered with pictures of music history: him laughing with Stevie Wonder and Lionel Ritchie, him at the Grammys with one gigantic hit maker after another, him shaking hands with President Obama. Huge windows look out over New York City. The sofas were white as piano keys. I was afraid to sit down.

L.A. Reid is totally the most suave individual in the world. His designer suit was sharp enough to put your eye out. He said, “C’mon in. Nice to meet you, young man.”

He sat behind his desk, which was bigger than Grandpa’s car. Scooter and Usher pushed seats out of the way, and I stood in the middle of the room with my guitar and sang a couple of songs. Scooter said, “Do the
August Rush
thing.”

I did that too, and then I stood there waiting.

Finally, L.A. said, “Wow!”

He picked up the phone and made a few calls. In about thirty seconds, six more people came in and sat on the white sofas.

“Do it again,” he said, and you better believe I did.

We thanked everybody. Everybody thanked us. They left. Then we left. I guess, if life was a movie, the director would say, “Cut, cut, cut. There has to be more to it than that. Where’s the
drama? Where’s the big moment?” But it just doesn’t work like that. The way it works is you go to these meetings, and then you go home and wait and wait and wait... and still wait for the phone to ring until you hear that you’re going to take the next small step forward. Or not.

Mom and I went back to Stratford, jumped out of our skin every time the phone rang, and finally – finally – got the amazing news we’d been waiting for. Island Def Jam wanted to sign me. I was on top of the world, but Scooter said, “Keep your shirt on. This is huge, but we’ve got to work through the details before we celebrate.”

It would take another whole book to try to explain the business side of all this, but Scooter wanted me to understand it, so he made me sit in. Didn’t matter if I was falling asleep, tapping my feet, going insane from boredom, he wanted me to know what was going on. There was only one thing I really wanted to know: “Do I get a tour bus?”

“Eventually,” said Scooter. “I definitely see that down the road.”

“Yes! Will the bus have an Xbox?”

Scooter laughed and said, “That’s the dream.”

Long story short, the paperwork was finally worked out,
and Mom and I flew to Atlanta. The night we officially signed the deal with Def Jam, Scooter took us all out to Straits, this restaurant owned by Ludacris. Scooter’s other artist Asher Roth and his buddy Boyder came along, and kept teasing me about toasting with ginger ale while everyone else had champagne and how they could still beat me playing
Rock Band
and
Guitar Hero,
even if I was in the big leagues now. Asher was really blowing up huge on the rap scene right then, the rising star everybody (including Eminem) was talking about.

He was like, “I’m gonna watch you, bro. I don’t want you splashing money around and getting into the nice things. You gotta stay humble about it.”

“It’s cool, Asher. I’ll just have people walking behind throwing flower petals everywhere I go,” I joked.

Scooter had the kitchen send out a big chocolate cake, and, when it came to the table, he stood up and announced to the whole place, “Everybody? Hey, may I have your attention, please? This young man has just signed a record deal with Island Def Jam!”

This was Atlanta, musical center of the universe, in a restaurant owned by Ludacris. Everybody sitting there knew how huge this was. The whole place broke out in cheers and whistling.

It was embarrassing – like when the waiters come out and sing “Happy Birthday” or whatever – but, after all we’d been through
together, it was a great moment. We’d really gotten to be a family. That made it a little easier to think about leaving Stratford. Mom and I went home and started making plans to move to Atlanta. Neither of us could believe how far we’d come. And it blew both our minds to think about how far we might go.

I was eager to get on with it. I was writing songs and playing music all the time, dying to get into the recording studio, itching with that about-to-bungee-jump-off-a-bridge feeling. I tried to keep my mouth shut about it at school, because here’s the thing about telling people you’re about to bungee-jump off a bridge – or do anything else that seems different or big or outside of what people usually do – your real friends will be like, “Dude! That’s awesome!” Other people will look at you like you’re an idiot and point out all the things that might go wrong. And the people who are the least happy with their own lives will hope that the cord breaks and you fracture your skull.

But, as Scooter said, that’s about them, not you.

I spent another summer busking in front of the Avon Theatre and started ninth grade at Northwestern Secondary School, still waiting for that growth spurt, competing with the twelfth-grade athletes, the Goliaths.

Mom worked through all the paperwork you need to move to the United States from Canada, which is a lot more complicated than you might think. She sold all our stuff, and we moved in with Grandpa and Grandma, which was probably more fun for me than it was for Mom and Grandma. Nerves got frayed.

Weeks turned into months. This was probably the hardest part of the whole thing: waiting. And waiting. And waiting. Finally, everything was in place. We said goodbye to Grandpa and Grandma and all our friends – everything we’d ever thought of as home – and headed for Atlanta with nothing but our clothes and my guitar.

Carin and Scooter went scouting around Asher’s neighborhood and found a house for us a block from his place so we’d be able to hang out. It was all so last minute Scooter even had to sign the lease for the house in his name so we didn’t end up
losing the place. Our first night in town, we stayed with Carin’s mom and dad, and the next day Scooter took us shopping and let Mom put furniture and other household necessities on his credit card.