Bobby Brown to Publish ‘Raw, Unvarnished’ Memoir Next Year
Bobby Brown will detail his career in music and marriage to the late singer Whitney Houston in a new memoir, fittingly titled My Prerogative, set to be published next June via Dey Street Books, The Associated Press reports.
In a statement, Brown said that My Prerogative was written after the death of his and Houston’s only daughter, Bobbi Kristina, which the singer called in a statement, “one of the most agonizing traumas I had ever experienced.” Bobbi Kristina died in July, having been hospitalized after she was found unconscious in a bathtub at her home in Roswell, Georgia in late January.
“I was surprised by how therapeutic it was to work on this project, to look at the entire arc of my life and to realize that although there has been considerable pain, I have also been incredibly blessed,” Brown said. “I hope my fans and other readers of this book will be entertained by this trip into the crazy, exciting, fascinating world of Bobby Brown. And I hope they will feel that I have been as honest and open with them in these pages as I have tried to be my entire life.”
Dey Street Books called the book “raw and unvarnished” and said it would “set the record straight” about Brown’s career and tumultuous marriage to Houston from 1992 to 2007. Houston herself was found dead in a bathtub in 2012; Brown has often sparred with the late singer’s mother, Cissy, who claimed in her own book, Remembering Whitney, that Brown greatly exacerbated and enabled her daughter’s drug habit.
In the memoir, Brown will also open up about his own struggles with drugs and alcohol, and his various run-ins with the law over the years. But amidst all the scandal, My Prerogative will feature stories from Brown’s sprawling, three decades in music: The singer co-founded the New Jack Swing group New Edition in 1982 before embarking on a massively successful solo career, which included hits like “Girlfriend,” “Humpin’ Around,” “Every Little Step” and, of course, “My Prerogative.”
My Prerogative was co-written with journalist Nick Chiles, who has also helped pen books with Reverend Al Sharpton and former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick.