Harlem USA. 115th and Lenox. Martin Luther King Jr. Towers. Saturday night in late July. It's a hellish hot day, but not scorching enough to stop a good game of basketball. At the Kingdome, a seedy but legendary court in the middle of the 'hood, the Sacramento Kings' Ron Artest, number 11, is warming up.
He jogs up and down the fractured concrete. With each poetic motion, spectators' eyes dance along with his sweaty moves, gasping to every body chord. But just as quickly as he kept the spectators in suspense, suddenly all eyes are no longer on Artest. Suiting up underneath a blue tent is Artest's younger teammate. He's No. 6. His name is Chris Brown.
When the MC announces his arrival, little faces race up the grassy lawn faster than a Madura bull run. Spectators strain to see. Camera phones flash. The bleachers tremble.
When he enters the court, the screaming crowd warms up, as does a 40-something heckler, wearing a white tee and a face that's seen better days.
"Yo Chris!" he barks from the top of a bleacher. "Is your man, on the flo'? If he ain't, let me know!” he cracks, singing lyrics from Brown's 2005 song, "Run It." The crowd bursts out laughing, but Chris ignores him. His face is tight and firm like a boxer ready to beat the hell out of someone.
If he's mortified by the trash-talker, it only shows once he starts handling the ball. Someone throws him an easy pass and he fumbles it. He gets the ball again and starts dribbling fiercely, like he's channeling Allen Iverson. He crosses over, drives to the basket, and…misses. Brown gets the ball again, swivels on his heel and heads back to the hoop — air ball.
"Why he trying to get all crazy?" a teenage boy on the sideline says, sucking his teeth.
Soon enough, it's time for Chris to leave. His road manager, Maceo Price, gives him the neck slicing "cut" gesture. But as Chris inches toward the gate, so does an army of teenage girls. Suddenly, kids male and female, big and small, race across the court after him. A big-chested girl about the age of 15, rocking a worn-out weave and miniskirt, slows down to catch her breath. "Chris Brown," she mutters with a smile, "is the shit."
By then, though, Chris is already a block or two away, safely ensconced in a shiny black Escalade, leaving exhaust fumes behind him and a gaggle of screaming kids a mere speck in the rearview mirror.
Before Chris was a mega-star, he was an average pubescent teenage boy following in the footprints of other dominant pop performers who've made singing, slick moves, and a pretty fair-skinned face a gospel of the ghetto. His influence was the church. His altar is the stage, where he dodges size small panty pitching during performances. Brown is the challenger Usher - an inspiration whom he's also been accused of copying - didn't get a chance to have.
His first single "Run It," produced by Scott Storch, and written by Sean Garrett, became a No.1 Billboard 100 single before his eponymous album (which to date has sold 1.9 million copies) was even released.
He was the cuddliest crooner to pop up on television since Tevin Campbell, even though he ran with a rough crowd. "Run It" featured Dipset's Juelz Santana and "Gimme That" featured hardened lyrical nobleman Lil Wayne - both made him look like a schoolboy trying to shoot the shit with project delinquents.
"The first album was me finding myself and my voice, finding how I sing," Chris explains, chewing on a piece of ice at Bar 89 in Soho. "I was rolling with the punches," he says, "because everything was new to me."
When Brown speaks, it's with a slight lisp, and if it wasn't for the dab of fuzz on his chin, he would completely have a baby face. Height wise, he's a handsome 6'1", and his posture is damn near perfect, thanks to years of dancing and media training. His tight-knit posse - manager, road manager, mom, assistant, and bodyguard - acts as his image-police, self-esteem boosters, best friends, and, at certain points, drill sergeants.
"Everybody wants a piece of your time," he deadpans. "And sometimes you don't get your own time."
On his sophomore album, Exclusive, Brown's no longer singing to the training-bra chick next door. Instead, he's stepping his game up, going for the girl who might be willing to let him go all the way. On "Get At Cha," produced by the Underdogs, Chris gets straight to the point: "You gotta show me if you're ready to be a bad girl!"
"I got the younger girls," he says. "I'm giving something to the older ladies. It's not like, 'Let me pull your panties down and do this!' But I get a chance to express myself how I want to now and be grown."
On "Take You Down" - a song that Chris co-wrote - he boldly proclaims: "It ain't my first time.../Let's bump and grind.../Let me take you down." (The J. Holiday song "Bed" was originally written for Brown, too: "Whoever his team was, was some assholes." Brown says. He offered the producers $100,000 to get the record back, to no avail.)
"Girls are obviously losing their virginity at 15, 16," he says, directly. "I'm not promoting that, but [my songs] are basically talking about me becoming a man."
Growing up in the trailer parks of Tappahannock, Va., Chris was always a singer. "He started singing in church," says his mom, Joyce Hawkins, aka. Mama Brown, a short light-skinned woman with straight auburn hair, rosy cheeks, and eyes that laugh. "To be honest, I never really knew he would become a singer." Matter-of-fact, Hawkins says, she never "paid a lot of attention" to young Chris' crooning around the house.
Joyce had separated from Chris' biological dad when Chris was 6. At first, it was all-good. "Two Christmases, two birthday presents," he recalls. "It wasn't no big hardship on me," he says flatly at the restaurant, his mom within earshot.
When he was 13, he moved to Harlem, N.Y., to stay with a friend while he worked on his burgeoning music career. "I was in the 'hood," he recalls. "135th and Amsterdam."
In between polishing his musical chops (none of his label people knew he danced until his first music video), Chris sometimes had too much aggression pent up, and it needed to be released. Once, when he was 15 and newly signed to Jive, he got into a fistfight with a guy at a basketball game over a chair. "He was out there with his homies," Brown says. "So I was like, 'Oh, ya'll about to jump me now? What's up then?!'" Luckily, the "homies" never got involved. And eventually, the cops came and broke up the scuffle. And though it's tough to picture chipmunk-cheeked, flash-dancing Chris Breezy preparing for a fight, he assures, "If it came down to it, I'd do what I had to do."
Hearing Chris' bluster is a shock, another reminder that he's much more than lungs of steel, ostentatious dance moves, and a dimpled face. Don't mistake his PG image for weakness. His ascent into young-manhood recalls how elder stars like Beyonce, who went from being a good girl to a bootylicious blond bombshell, and Usher, who went from a pimple-faced choirboy to a pants dropping pop prince, crossed over from darlings to divas and divos.
Brown just bought himself a six-bedroom home in Virginia, where he lives with his 6-month-old pit bull, Diamond. and his 1,000 or so pairs of sneakers. He has three cars, including an electric-blue Lamborghini, and for his 18th birthday (which was captured for MTV's My Super Sweet 18), famed jeweler DiBur sent him a watch weighed heavy with ice. ("I can't even tell you how many diamonds are in it," Chris says).
In March, a set of suspect nude photos popped up on the Internet that were rumored to be of Brown, a sure sign his fan base was getting more mature, and more sexualized.
"First of all, I don't take pictures of myself," he says with a smirk. "I ain't never feeling myself that much. If I'm gonna show somebody that, I'd rather show the person that's gonna be in the room with me at that time."
He adds: "I'm the first one that keeps my image perfectly straight."
And what about the rumored infatuation with crunk 'n' B starlet Ciara? Chris' face curls up as if he'd just noticed a foul odor. "I don't want Ciara," he remarks, denying previous reports clearly stating he was obsessed with Bow Wow's ex. "I don't want any industry girl." Preferably, Chris says, he just wants a good old "regular girl." And, oh yeah: "a model."
Some models you notice immediately. Their legs seem to stand like golden stilts, and their walk could crush a regular woman's confidence into a ball of defeat.
When Jaslene Gonzalez, the champ from the latest season of America's Next Top Model, saunters by Brown's table at Bar 89 in Soho, a chic spot he likes to eat at when he's not holed up on tour, he loses track of his conversation and his eyes seem to dance to her rhythm. Brown doesn't have a clue who she is, "but she looks good, though," he says, grinning.
Noticing him staring, Jaslene decides to walk over. "What's up Chris," she coos. "My name is Jaslene. I just won America's Next Top Model. I'm a huge fan." It's hard to tell who's more nervous: him or her.
A couple of seconds pass. "How you doing? Nice to meet you," Chris eventually replies. Standing behind her is someone who looks equally excited about meeting Chris Brown, a fella who could quite possibly be Jaslene's man. Chris leans back and notices dude, keeping the smile going. "Oh, what's up homie?!" he says.
When it comes to women, Chris is no longer the 18-year-old man-child he wants you to see — he's a smitten little boy with very little experience.
Shockingly, the attractive performer whose just made People magazine's Most Beautiful People list, and has been called one of the Hottest Men of 2007 by Glamour magazine, hasn't been on a date in more than three years.
"My last girlfriend was when I was 14," Chris says, taking a sip from his second cranberry and Sprite.
How old were you when you lost your virginity?
I don't give out my details. I'm still a virgin in your eyes.
But you've had girlfriends, right?
I've had girlfriends, but it's different. You mean relationship girlfriends or girls that you...
Jump-offs?
Not jump-offs! Like, you don't be like, "That's my girl," but you know when you hang with her, it's like...
Cut buddies?
I wouldn't necessarily call it a cut buddy. We just cool...something like that.
Friends with benefits?
Perfect. Friends with benefits. Exactly.
How many girlfriends have you had?
Two...and a lot of friends with benefits.
Such are the perks, and costs, of growing up in the spotlight. "I'm girl crazy," he assures. "I'm very girl crazy." But he rarely approaches women, for fear that real life might get in the way of something bigger.
"If I'm singling out one girl, think about all the other girls who's falling in love with me in that club," he says. "What they gon' think? So it's like, I have a relationship with every girl. It's like every girl is my girlfriend, so I have to be faithful to every girl and not [just] talk to one girl."
At this point, Chris consciously understands he can't just be a regular guy: He's CHRIS BROWN. And he'll go to great pains to thwart tasty temptations in order to avoid universal-crushed hearts of little fawning girls. Maybe when he's past 18 though, he'll care less about the well-crafted image and give in.
"All I have to do is one video where I take my shirt off and grind on a girl, and then I'm a bad boy," he says, mischief clearly creeping into his tone. "That image can flip anytime I want it to."
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