Bobby Brown 20/20 Interview: The One Thing He Wants People to Know

The heights of celebrity, the depths of great loss and “Every Little Step” along the way. That’s how Robin Roberts described her “20/20” interview with Bobby Brown, where no questions were off limits, and the R&B singer candidly described his relationships with his ex-wife, Whitney Houston; their daughter, Bobbi Kristina; his past drug and current alcohol problems and much more.

Bobby Brown admitted that it took going to jail for him to stop doing drugs. He once again denied that he was the person who introduced Whitney Houston to drugs, even though that has pretty much been well-established before now. Still, Houston’s “good girl gone bad” story was such that some of her fans needed someone to blame. That does not seem to faze Brown as much as the stories that branded him a “woman-beater.” That was the one thing that he wanted people to know he was not guilty of.

A clip was shown of Whitney Houston on The Oprah Winfrey Show telling the horrified talk show queen that Brown spit on her in front of their daughter. “That was just lies,” Brown said, “I’ve never been a violent person towards women.” He did admit to striking Whitney once in the course of an altercation between them over drugs. This didn’t come up, but Houston herself claimed in a 1999 Redbook article that if there was any hitting going on between the couple, she was the aggressor.

Brown described how he was getting his relationship back on track with his daughter, Bobbi Kristina, after a long separation. His grown children, Landon and La Princia, corroborated that they were all unable to stay in touch with Bobbi Kristina after Whitney’s death because of tensions with the Houston family. Before her tragic end, Bobbi Kristina reached out to her father and was supposed to move out to be near him in Los Angeles but was found unconscious and barely alive at her Georgia home two days before that would have taken place. She never recovered and Brown said if he knew how much trouble she was in, he would have gone to Georgia to get her. “If I could get those two days back, my daughter would be here,” he said, choking back his tears.

Brown claims that Bobbi Kristina’s death is no mystery to him: “I know exactly what happened to my daughter. The same thing that happened to my daughter is what happened to Whitney. There’s only one person that was around both occasions.”

The interview later moved from the painful past to the present at the home Brown shares with his wife and manager, Alicia, and their young children, Cassius (named after Muhammad Ali) and Bodhi (nicknamed Yum Yum). Alicia is currently expecting their third child. “I’m very happy right now,” Brown said. “I have a beautiful wife, beautiful kids, a beautiful chance to do something else great.”

The 20/20 interview is now online. “Every Little Step” is available for pre-order on Amazon. Its release date is June 13th.

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