Bobby Brown was not the bad guy in his marriage to Whitney Houston. According to Bobby Brown.
In a new book, Brown, best known now for his frequent run-ins with the law rather than his onetime Grammy-winning music career, writes that Houston fueled his appetite for drugs and used him to tidy up her image.
Passages from Bobby Brown: The Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing But..., due out June 1, were leaked Thursday to the New York Post. The publisher, Down South Books, confirmed to E! News that the excerpts were legit.
In a statement from Houston's rep, the star was said to be "sad that Bobby feels the need to say such things, but she chooses to take the high road, and will not speak badly about the father of her child even if it's to set the record straight."
Brown has a different view on how to address the mother of his 15-year-old daughter, Bobbi.
"I never used cocaine until after I met Whitney," Brown writes. "Before then, I had experimented with other drugs, but marijuana was my drug of choice."
Brown married Houston in 1992. At the time, he was the ex-New Edition singer who'd made good as a solo act with three platinum albums; she was music's supreme diva about to score the biggest success of her career with The Bodyguard soundtrack.
If the pairing looked like the perfect match—the King of New Jack Swing meets the Queen of Ballads—Brown says the union was "doomed from the very beginning."
Houston, according to Brown, wanted to get married to deflect attention from rumors about her sexuality.
While Houston was out to get married and get pregnant in order to "kill all speculation," Brown writes, he just wanted to be loved.
Brown does tell tales on himself, as well, in the book.
According to the tome's blurb copy, it notes he dated Janet Jackson and Madonna, "sle[pt] with thousands of women," and nearly died from a drug overdose. For boy-band completists, it promises to reveal "the real reason he left New Edition." And for fans of author and music-video star Karrine "Superhead" Steffans, it offers this critique: "Yes, I've spent several nights at her house," Brown writes. "But she was only good for what her nickname stood for."
Brown, 39, and Houston, 44, formally ended their marriage last April after 15 years, several separations due to Brown's various incarcerations, numerous tabloid stories and one warts-and-all reality series, Being Bobby Brown.