Every Little Step: My Story by Bobby Brown, Nick Chiles Page A

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 career. 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, automatedpeepshows—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