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He stars in a reality TV show called "Being Bobby Brown," so it's fair to wonder: What's it really like being Bobby Brown?
"It's very busy now," he says from Sacramento, Calif., where he's rehearsing a tour that stops Sunday at Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut.
That's a good thing. Brown, 36, once among the biggest names in R&B music, suffered a precipitous drop in prestige in the 1990s, when his recording career lost momentum and his legal troubles grabbed the headlines. He has been straight since the show first aired, in June, and he aims to stay that way.
"I'm trying to stay as busy as possible, you know," he says. "As you know, with the disease, it's an everyday thing. One day at a time. So I'm just trying to stay busy doing something that keeps me focused."
The disease is Brown's struggle with addiction. Devoting himself to his music and his family is the best way to stay busy, he says.
"Me being on stage and in the studio and being around my kids, that keeps me well-focused," he says.
Although Brown hasn't released a new album since 1997's "Forever," he says he has finished a new, still-untitled record; he is deciding whether to seek a label deal or release it on his own. Either way, it's a good time for him to put out an album: His TV show has raised his public profile and made him and his wife, Whitney Houston, household names again.
"A lot of people recognize me more now," Brown says. "It's not that they didn't before, but now it's more, they like the show, and they're sorry about how people treated me and my wife."
Brown's relationship with Houston has long been a subject of pop-cultural fascination, but their affection for each another is obvious on the show.
"I'm in love with my wife, and my wife's in love with me, and we're going to make this work, no matter what," Brown says. "We've been married 14 years now; we're even better now. The show for us was therapy."
In concert, Brown says, "I'm gonna give them just Bobby Brown raw and uncut. No dancers, just me and the band and the microphone, and hopefully people will enjoy the show. Well, I know they will."
"In the music industry, it's become so, how do I say it, so mechanical," he says. "It's become like a ritual for a band to have dancers; it's become a ritual for you to -- I don't ever use tracks, know what I'm saying? I like the 'liveness' of being on stage with a band and no other vocals but my own and my background singers."
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