Bringing you up-to-date news on Chris Brown!
Christopher Maurice Brown was born on May 5, 1989, in the small town of Tappahannock, Virginia to Joyce Hawkins, a former day care center director, and Clinton Brown, a corrections officer at a local prison. The youngest child of the couple, he has an older sister who works in a bank. Since his childhood, music was something which always had been present in Brown’s life, though none of his familiars were related to music; he used to listen soul albums that his parents had owned, but eventually, Brown began to show interest in the hip-hop scene.
Brown taught himself to sing and dance at a young age, often citing Michael Jackson as his inspiration. He then began to perform in his church choir and in several local talent shows. While mimicking an Usher performance, his mother recognized his vocal talent and they began to look for opportunities of a record deal. At the same time, Brown had been through personal issues. His parents had already been divorced, and he said his mother’s boyfriend made him terrified all the time, due to the domestic violence his mother endured from her boyfriend.
At the age of 13, Brown was discovered by a local production team who visited his father’s gas station while searching for new talent. The singer then, moved to New York. In 2004, Tina Davis—then-senior A&R executive at Def Jam Recordings—discovered him while he was working with some local producers. She loved what she heard and saw when Brown auditioned in her office at Island Def Jam Records in New York. She immediately took him to meet the former president of the Island Def Jam Music Group Antonio “L.A.” Reid, who offered to sign him at the same day. “I knew that Chris had real talent,” says Davis. “I just knew I wanted to be part of it.”
The negotiations with Def Jam lasted two months, until Davis lost her job due to a corporate merger. Brown then asked her to be his manager. Davis accepted, starting to “promote” the singer to labels such as Jive Records, J-Records and Warner Bros. Records. He ultimately choose Jive, due to its successful work with then-young acts such as Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake. Brown claims, “I picked Jive because they had the best success with younger artists in the pop market, [...] I knew I was going to capture my [African American] audience, but Jive had a lot of strength in the pop area as well as longevity in careers.”
[Text from Wikipedia]