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In a downtown hotel suite, Bobby Brown fires up a menthol and talks about his new reality show on Bravo, his marriage and his hopes of getting back into the spotlight . . . for the right reasons.
"I'm just an entertainer, man . . . trying hard to get back in," he says.
These days, the 36-year-old singer and Alpharetta resident is better known for stints in court, in jail and in tabloid headlines than for a singing career that peaked with his 1988 album "Don't Be Cruel," featuring his hit song "My Prerogative."
He claims he intentionally cooled his career to spend his time as a hands-on father, just as his own "Pop" was to him growing up. With wife Whitney Houston, he has a daughter, Bobbi Kristina, and two sons and another daughter from previous relationships.
"I took my time off, raised my kids, and that's beautiful," he says. "I'm almost going on 15 years in a marriage, so I've become successful in two different fields other than entertainment. I've become successful as a father, and I'm successful as a husband-and that's what's keeping me going, man."
Well, the "successful father" part may be open to debate, at least in court, since he was jailed last year in Massachusetts for failing to pay $63,500 in child support. Among other things, "Being Bobby Brown" (10 p.m. Thursday on Bravo) is the singer's bid to retool his longtime trouble-magnet image as Mr. Whitney Houston.
Actually, for years now both members of the duo have been in the headlines more for bad behavior than hummable hits.
Brown has been arrested for drunken driving and failure to show up in traffic court and for beating up a guy at an Orlando nightclub. His car was shot at outside another nightclub, in Boston, and his sister's fiance was killed in the gunfire. And just last month, two friends Brown was with at a birthday party at Justin's Restaurant and Bar got into a fight with other patrons and wound up stabbed.
Well, that's just the short list.
He's not alone in trying to straighten up his act. Houston, his wife since 1992, made news last December for ramming her car into a MARTA bus in Alpharetta. She's fresh out of a court-ordered, month-long stay in rehab in April (her second visit in a year) for a problem with marijuana.
"She's doing really, really, really good," Brown says. "It helps both of us, you know? I've been in recovery for almost two years, and for her to be in it with me is even better."
Despite his reckless rep, in person Brown comes across as laid back and personable. Believe it or not, he describes himself as something of a house-husband. "See, I can cook, like, whole dinners -turkey, collard greens, fresh macaroni and cheese from scratch.
"[Whitney's] got it real good, and she's getting fat now."
Houston is back in the studio, he says, recording a new CD with Clive Davis, who discovered her in the early '80s and produced her self-titled first album in 1985. "Hopefully she'll be doing another movie this year, but she wants to have a baby, too."
That's obvious in the reality show's first episode. After his jail time in Massachusetts, Brown and Houston reunite at Buckhead's Grand Hyatt, their home-away-from-home. Houston shuts the bedroom door in Bobbi Kristina's face, saying, "Be right back-Daddy trying to make a baby."
It's one of several memorable warts-and-all moments in the first two episodes. Some others: Brown smearing Preparation H on the bags under his eyes following his long reunion night with his wife. Or Houston melting down at a Bahamas resort as fans pester her for photos, moaning, "Lord, I just want to be a real person." But probably the biggest TMI moment comes in Episode 2, when Brown tells how he helped his wife deal with a bad case of constipation. (Squeamish viewers may want to keep a finger on the remote.)
As surreal as things get, the series isn't the train wreck people might be expecting (unlike the recent, unwatchable Britney Spears-Keven Federline disaster). It paints a convincing portrait of a couple who really are crazy about each other. We see them dining at Prime and Chopstix, relaxing in a spa (where the jealous Brown insists that Houston's masseur be replaced by a masseuse) and, yes, appearing in court together to face a misdemeanor battery charge Brown got for allegedly hitting Houston.
As half of Atlanta's wiggiest celebrity couple, Brown didn't exactly have to get accustomed to cameras following his every move. He was used to it.
"These paparazzis, they hide behind trees, you know, and [stuff] like that," he says. "To me, that's an invasion of privacy. That's not a job."
Brown says he doesn't watch other reality shows; he mainly watches boxing matches. (Insert your own joke here.) He claims the idea for the series wasn't even his: "My kids wanted to do it, so it was, like, how can you say no to two little girls with pigtails?"
More than a family project, though, the show is the singer's attempt to take control of his public profile. "I just wanted people to know me more," he says. "I'm tired of being sick and tired of all the garbage that's out there."
He's talking about not only all the gossip and punchlines that have gathered around him- including a throwaway courtroom joke in Tyler Perry's "Diary of a Mad Black Woman" -but also the racy content on television these days.
"It's just like everybody's nasty right now. And I know I'm not one to speak, because I was arrested here for [lewdness] onstage," he says, referring to the time police stopped a 1989 concert in Columbus because of his provocative dancing. "There's a little too much shaking and bodies on television when my kids are watching, you know?
"I guess I've developed a conscience."
Even though he hasn't had a new album since 1997's "Forever," that doesn't mean he hasn't been busy.
"I have over a thousand songs, so it was like I never stopped," he says. "I kept recording all the while I've been off; I just chose not to put songs out."
And here's another one of Brown's contradictions."I don't want to be part of the record industry," he says. "I think it's slavery, basically. So if I'm gonna get back into it, it would have to be something that agrees with my style, my everyday life. I've got to be able to just be Bobby and still do my music."
So there's the Catch-22. "I love entertainment," he says. "I love work. I love being the center of attention."
With "Being Bobby Brown," he hopes the attention, for once, won't all be negative.
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