On Monday, Bobby Brown’s long-awaited memoir, Every Little Step, finally hit shelves. In the weeks leading up to its release, the book made headlines for its vivid descriptions of Brown’s love life—particularly his graphic sexual encounters with ghosts.
“I bought this mansion in Georgia... this was a really, really spooky place," Brown told 20/20’s Robin Roberts. "But yes, one time, I woke up, and yeah, a ghost. I was being mounted by a ghost."
If potential readers are wondering how Brown went from singing in New Edition to penetrating poltergeists in a matter of years, the man had a less than average upbringing. According to Uproxx, a passage in Brown’s book explains how his parents used to sell cocaine out of the family’s home. Initially, Brown thought the massive, steel door his mother, Carole Brown, had installed at the apartment was to ward off Jehovah’s Witnesses, but in reality it was to protect her drug business.
One day, when Brown was 10, he was left alone and decided to try his hand at making fried chicken, reaching for a bag of white powder that he assumed was flour.
"So I decided to use the large bag of flour I found in the freezer to make some fried chicken. I got the chicken parts out of the refrigerator and covered a bunch of pieces in the flour. Then I dropped them in a pan of sizzling oil. I was 10. So I didn’t realize the strangely pungent smell emanating from the pan. When the chicken pieces were nice and brown, I figured I was done."
Brown started feeling strange from the chicken, eventually realizing that he had stumbled upon a “new addition to the family’s culinary offerings.”
"After I had taken a few bites and feeling weirder with each bite, my mother walked in the door. At first she was smiling at the idea that her little Bobby had made dinner. Then her gaze swept across the kitchen as she got hit with the full brunt of the scene, the smell, the mess, the powder. With horror, she realized what I had done. I fried chicken in her cocaine — a radical new addition to the family’s culinary offerings. Cocaine chicken."
While the story is amusing, Brown’s lifelong struggles with drug addiction are well known. In a 2012 interview with Matt Lauer, the singer denied accusations that he had gotten his late wife, Whitney Houston, addicted to cocaine.
“It's just unexplainable how one could, you know, [claim that I] got her addicted to drugs," Brown said. "I'm not the reason she's gone. It makes me feel terrible. But I know differently. I think if anyone ever knew us, if anybody ever spent time around us instead of time looking through the bubble, they would know how we felt about each other.”
[via Uproxx]