Bobby Brown Profile

NAME: Bobby Brown

OCCUPATION: Singer

BIRTH DATE: February 05, 1969 (Age: 42)

PLACE OF BIRTH: Boston, Massachusetts

ALTERNATE NAME(S): Robert Brown

Robert Brown was born on February 5, 1969, in the hardscrabble Orchard Park projects in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. He was the second youngest of eight children born to Herbert Brown, a construction worker, and Carol Brown, an elementary school teacher. Brown endured a very rough childhood marred by poverty and gang violence. Knowing that his parents could not afford to buy him the various things he coveted as a child. At the age of 10, he was shot in the knee when a skirmish broke out between rival gangs at a block party. A year later, Brown got into an altercation with an acquaintance who pulled a knife and slashed his shoulder. The turning point in Brown's childhood came shortly after, when his close friend James Flint was stabbed to death at a party at the age of 11. "When his friend passed, you could see Bobby taking his career, his schooling, his whole life more seriously," Brown's brother Tommy recalled. "As kids, everyone had their dreams, but his loss made him more determined.

Countless other artists expanded on the new jack swing blueprint, with many of Brown's former New Edition colleagues at the forefront: Bell Biv Devoe, Johnny Gill, Ralph Tresvant. Moreover, Don't Be Cruel made L.A. Reid and Babyface into hot commodities, and their sound was all over the airwaves. Just before his new album, Bobby, was released in the summer of 1992, Brown married superstar diva Whitney Houston, who sang the duet "Something in Common" on the new record. Bobby's lead single, "Humpin' Around," was a smash on both the pop and R&B charts, reaching the Top Five on the former. However, Bobby didn't sustain the momentum of Don't Be Cruel; perhaps it didn't stand out from the pack the way Don't Be Cruel had in 1988, or perhaps white audiences were too preoccupied with grunge. Whatever the reason, sales of Bobby topped out at around two million copies, despite several more R&B hits in "Good Enough," "Get Away," and "That's the Way Love Is." In 1993, Georgia police arrested Brown for an overly suggestive stage performance, an incident that would prove to be the first of many legal difficulties for Brown over the next few years.

Brown produced only one album, 1997's Forever, which was preformed poorly commercially, and eventually Brown became more famous as Whitney Houston's abusive husband than as an artist in his own right. Brown and Houston divorced in 2007. Soon after, Brown began dating a woman named Alicia Etheridge. They have been engaged since 2010.