Justin Bieber Page 6

  That was a tough lesson for me to learn when I was trying to break into this business. Patience. Pacing. But we made it happen. After that “With You” video with the bad hair and Bart Simpson’s crotch, the next video we posted to my YouTube channel was me singing for Usher in February of 2008.

  A FRIEND FOR LIFE

  The way this all happened kind of reminded me of Horton Hears a Who! Scooter is the elephant, trying to tell all the kangaroos and cockatoos in the music business that there are a zillion fans out there, but nobody would believe him for the longest time. He decided we needed some star power on our side. We needed to go into these record-label meetings with somebody who had some flash and could give that stamp. Scooter knew two guys who were perfect for this job: Justin Timberlake and Usher. They’d both made it big as teens, and then went on to make the successful transition to major stars as adults. They’re both nice guys, who get big respect from label executives. We managed to get both of them to look at the videos on YouTube, which by now really demonstrated how much I was growing – physically and vocally – and how many fans were just waiting for me to put something out there.

  Usher said to Scooter, “Where has this kid been? Why haven’t I seen him?”

  “You did,” said Scooter. “That was him in the parking lot that day. Remember? He wanted to sing for you.”

  “Man, everybody wants to sing. How was I supposed to know he’s the real thing?”

  Timberlake had the same reaction. Both he and Usher were interested in meeting me right away. There was no way Mom and I could keep our feet on the ground now. It was like, Usher and Timberlake want to meet me? Are you kidding? There was no point in trying to tell anyone at school about this. It would be like telling them I was going to meet CHUCK NORRIS, and we all know that guy is untouchable. I mean, c’mon. It’s CHUCK NORRIS. He doesn’t need Twitter, he’s already following you.

  Two weeks before my fourteenth birthday, Mom and I flew to Atlanta to meet Usher. I stood there in my Toronto Maple Leafs hoody and sang “You Got It Bad” for him. He sat there in his leather jacket and listened. We sat around and talked for a while, and he was one of the coolest people I’d ever met. He gives off this great, calm, friendly vibe that just makes you feel glad to be there. Mom liked him a lot, and we were both over the moon when Scooter told us he wanted me to come back so we could talk about possible ways to work together, but Scooter told him, “We still have to have this conversation with Timberlake. I promised I’d bring the kid to meet him.”

  We met up with Justin Timberlake at his place in Memphis. Jessica Biel was there. Scooter practically had to put his hands over my eyes to make me stop looking at her. Timberlake arrived, and I sang “Cry Me a River” for him.

  “It takes a lot of balls to sing me my own song,” he said. But I guess he liked me, because he wanted to move forward with a deal and we spent the rest of the afternoon just hanging out watching March Madness basketball together. Timberlake was and still is just an amazing talent, and someone to this day I look up to and study his career. It was so surreal that he wanted to do a deal with me, just a kid from a small town in Canada. And so did Usher.

  “His words spoke to me and I knew then that I’d found a friend for life”

  I couldn’t believe things were finally coming together. I was almost afraid to believe it. The only thing I can compare it to is when I bungee-jumped off a bridge in New Zealand not long ago. It was a long journey to get there, but, at the last minute, there I was. Standing there. Ready. I had no idea what this was going to be like, but I knew it was going to be awesome.

  Mom and I few down to Atlanta again, and Usher put us up in a super-fancy hotel that was like a different universe from anywhere I’d ever been. There were phones by the toilet and a safe in a drawer. The refrigerator was stocked with everything kids love to eat, and there was a huge basket of toys in my room. I got out a Rubik’s Cube and worked it out in about three minutes. (There’s a trick to it.) When I handed it to Usher, he looked at Scooter and said, “Who is this kid?”

  When Usher talks to you one on one, he speaks very quietly, but he’s very intense and his eyes never break away from yours. When he talked to me and Mom, he spoke with a lot of passion and made a lot of sense.

  “They’re like tag-team wrestlers”

  “If you’re an astronaut going to the moon, there’s not a whole lot of people in the world with whom you can share that experience. Well, I’m a fellow astronaut. I’ve been to the moon. I can talk you up and get you back down safely. The beautiful part of all this is you don’t get a chance to see it while you’re in it. Now I actually get a chance to step back and watch it all happen again. Those incredible moments on stage... Even the obstacles, it’ll be a pleasure to watch, even though it’s agonizing, you know. But I can be more helpful because I’ve experienced that. Being the entertainer I am, I stand on the shoulders of giants that basically were trailblazers. And all of my experiences, I want to share. All my knowledge. I want to share it with you and help you make this moment happen.”

  His words spoke to me, and I knew then that I’d found a friend for life. We made the decision to go forward with Usher, and I’ve never doubted it for a second. I’m the luckiest guy on earth to have him as my wingman.

  Scooter and Usher formed a partnership to navigate my career, and that seemed like a perfect idea. There’s a lot Scooter can tell me, and I trust him, but he doesn’t know what it’s like for me dealing with living in the spotlight the way Usher does. They’re like tag-team wrestlers, only instead of bashing me over the head with folding chairs they make me drink lots of water.

  THE REAL DEAL

  When Usher talks, people listen. He called the guy who’d given him his start, L.A. Reid, CEO of Island Def Jam Music Group. This is the music-industry legend who launched Mariah Carey, Pink, Avril Lavigne, TLC, Outkast, Toni Braxton and a whole lot of other Grammy winners and multi-platinum mega-artists. The dude is a beast. In April 2008, Mom and I met Scooter and Usher in New York City for what I knew might be one of the most important moments of my life. Getting signed to a record deal at Island Def Jam – that was the Holy Grail. We’d really be on our way. I couldn’t let myself think about it too much or I’d have been totally psyched out.

  I’d seen the movie August Rush a few days earlier and loved that part where the kid is playing that crazy slap-style guitar with the guitar lying down flat, and he’s wailing on it like it’s a guitar and drums and piano all at once. (Check it out on YouTube. It’s sick.) I channeled all my nervous energy into figuring out how to do it. The morning of the meeting, I couldn’t keep still. I was slamming away on that slap-style guitar, and Scooter shot a video of me so we could throw it up on YouTube and share it with my fans.

  In the car on the way to the meeting, I was still slapping and drumming on my lap, humming, making bad jokes, driving Mom crazy. Finally we were walking into L.A. Reid’s office with Chris Hicks from Def Jam, a man who was to have a big part to play in shaping my career and who has supported me every step of the way. L.A.’s office was like a cathedral – if a cathedral had cigars on the table. The walls were covered with pictures of music history: him laughing with Stevie Wonder and Lionel Ritchie, him at the Grammys with one gigantic hit maker after another, him shaking hands with President Obama. Huge windows look out over New York City. The sofas were white as piano keys. I was afraid to sit down.

  L.A. Reid is totally the most suave individual in the world. His designer suit was sharp enough to put your eye out. He said, “C’mon in. Nice to meet you, young man.”

  He sat behind his desk, which was bigger than Grandpa’s car. Scooter and Usher pushed seats out of the way, and I stood in the middle of the room with my guitar and sang a couple of songs. Scooter said, “Do the August Rush thing.”

  I did that too, and then I stood there waiting.

  Finally, L.A. said, “Wow!”

  He picked up the phone and made a few calls. In about thirty seconds, six more people c
ame in and sat on the white sofas.

  “Do it again,” he said, and you better believe I did.

  We thanked everybody. Everybody thanked us. They left. Then we left. I guess, if life was a movie, the director would say, “Cut, cut, cut. There has to be more to it than that. Where’s the drama? Where’s the big moment?” But it just doesn’t work like that. The way it works is you go to these meetings, and then you go home and wait and wait and wait... and still wait for the phone to ring until you hear that you’re going to take the next small step forward. Or not.

  “Island Def Jam wanted to sign me. I was on top of the world.”

  Mom and I went back to Stratford, jumped out of our skin every time the phone rang, and finally – finally – got the amazing news we’d been waiting for. Island Def Jam wanted to sign me. I was on top of the world, but Scooter said, “Keep your shirt on. This is huge, but we’ve got to work through the details before we celebrate.”

  It would take another whole book to try to explain the business side of all this, but Scooter wanted me to understand it, so he made me sit in. Didn’t matter if I was falling asleep, tapping my feet, going insane from boredom, he wanted me to know what was going on. There was only one thing I really wanted to know: “Do I get a tour bus?”

  “Eventually,” said Scooter. “I definitely see that down the road.”

  “Yes! Will the bus have an Xbox?”

  Scooter laughed and said, “That’s the dream.”

  Long story short, the paperwork was finally worked out, and Mom and I flew to Atlanta. The night we officially signed the deal with Def Jam, Scooter took us all out to Straits, this restaurant owned by Ludacris. Scooter’s other artist Asher Roth and his buddy Boyder came along, and kept teasing me about toasting with ginger ale while everyone else had champagne and how they could still beat me playing Rock Band and Guitar Hero, even if I was in the big leagues now. Asher was really blowing up huge on the rap scene right then, the rising star everybody (including Eminem) was talking about.

  He was like, “I’m gonna watch you, bro. I don’t want you splashing money around and getting into the nice things. You gotta stay humble about it.”

  “It’s cool, Asher. I’ll just have people walking behind throwing flower petals everywhere I go,” I joked.

  Scooter had the kitchen send out a big chocolate cake, and, when it came to the table, he stood up and announced to the whole place, “Everybody? Hey, may I have your attention, please? This young man has just signed a record deal with Island Def Jam!”

  This was Atlanta, musical center of the universe, in a restaurant owned by Ludacris. Everybody sitting there knew how huge this was. The whole place broke out in cheers and whistling.

  It was embarrassing – like when the waiters come out and sing “Happy Birthday” or whatever – but, after all we’d been through together, it was a great moment. We’d really gotten to be a family. That made it a little easier to think about leaving Stratford. Mom and I went home and started making plans to move to Atlanta. Neither of us could believe how far we’d come. And it blew both our minds to think about how far we might go.

  “There was only one thing I really wanted to know: ‘Will the bus have an Xbox?’”

  I was eager to get on with it. I was writing songs and playing music all the time, dying to get into the recording studio, itching with that about-to-bungee-jump-off-a-bridge feeling. I tried to keep my mouth shut about it at school, because here’s the thing about telling people you’re about to bungee-jump off a bridge – or do anything else that seems different or big or outside of what people usually do – your real friends will be like, “Dude! That’s awesome!” Other people will look at you like you’re an idiot and point out all the things that might go wrong. And the people who are the least happy with their own lives will hope that the cord breaks and you fracture your skull.

  But, as Scooter said, that’s about them, not you.

  “I was dying to get into the recording studio”

  A MOVING EXPERIENCE

  I spent another summer busking in front of the Avon Theatre and started ninth grade at Northwestern Secondary School, still waiting for that growth spurt, competing with the twelfth-grade athletes, the Goliaths.

  Mom worked through all the paperwork you need to move to the United States from Canada, which is a lot more complicated than you might think. She sold all our stuff, and we moved in with Grandpa and Grandma, which was probably more fun for me than it was for Mom and Grandma. Nerves got frayed.

  Weeks turned into months. This was probably the hardest part of the whole thing: waiting. And waiting. And waiting. Finally, everything was in place. We said goodbye to Grandpa and Grandma and all our friends – everything we’d ever thought of as home – and headed for Atlanta with nothing but our clothes and my guitar.

  Carin and Scooter went scouting around Asher’s neighborhood and found a house for us a block from his place so we’d be able to hang out. It was all so last minute Scooter even had to sign the lease for the house in his name so we didn’t end up losing the place. Our first night in town, we stayed with Carin’s mom and dad, and the next day Scooter took us shopping and let Mom put furniture and other household necessities on his credit card.

  “Mama Jan has become one of the most important people in my life”

  Now it was time to get down to business.

  Usher set me up with Jan Smith – Mama Jan – who also happens to be his vocal coach. She only takes on big acts, but she took me on because Usher pleaded my case. She’s one of the greatest people in the whole world, like a second mom to all of us, and she’s become one of the most important people in my life. She doesn’t mess around, and I don’t even think about pranking her or pulling any kind of crap.

  Another question people ask me all the time is if my career will fall apart if my voice changes.

  “There’s no if about it,” Jan said right from the start. “Puberty happens. We’ll work through it.”

  I’m not worried. She got Usher through it, too. And she brought him back after he’d completely lost his voice.

  Scooter says she’s our secret sauce.

  The next important member to join the family was Jenny, my tutor. Because I was only fourteen, there were strict child-labor laws that governed the hours I was allowed to work and educational requirements that had to be followed to the letter.

  Jenny works for the School of Young Performers, which specializes in homeschooling kids and teenagers who work in the entertainment industry. This was the school that Chris Brown and Rihanna and lots of kids in Broadway theater and television used.

  Jenny and I do pretty good together. (Pretty well, that is. Holla, Jenny!) She makes sure I’m on top of the homework and stuff, and I don’t prank her more than once a month. It’s hard to resist, because she’s so sweet and believes everything I say, which makes her very prankable.

  On April Fools’ Day, I said to her, “Hey, Jenny, let’s do a science experiment.”

  “Great idea,” she said. “Let’s do it.”

  “I read that if you put salt on top of butter, it heats it up. You can actually feel it.”

  “Really? I’ve never heard that.”

  I carefully put a stick of butter on a plate and measured a tablespoon of salt over it.

  “Okay, now we have to wait sixty seconds.” I meticulously timed the sixty seconds, then held my hand over the butter. “Oh, that’s wild. You really can feel it. That’s amazing. Check it out.”

  Jenny held her palm over the plate of butter, and faster than she could react, I pushed her hand down and squished the butter all over.

  It was hysterical.

  Pranks vs school = pranks win all day. Can you blame me? I’m just a kid.

  FIGURING IT OUT

  There was a lot of back-and-forth over whether or not I was ready to go into the studio and record my first single. Usher felt my voice was raw and needed more Mama Jan, but Scooter and I were impatient. We were beginning to think I’d g
o through puberty and grow a beard before I ever got anything on tape.

  Scooter had a woman named Tashia working with him as an A&R administrator on certain projects, helping him organize producers and cutting the payments and everything, but Tashia also has her own studio with Lashaunda “Babygirl” Carr. Asher Roth had worked there a few times and liked it a lot.

  Scooter told me and Mom, “I think this would be a great place for Justin creatively. It’s not scary. There are no bad influences.”

  Mom liked the sound of all that, and I liked the sound of their music. One song in particular seemed perfect for me. They played “Common Denominator” for us, and Scooter said, “This is the song.”

  * * *

  Out of all the things in life that I could fear,

  The only thing that would hurt me is if you weren’t here,

  I don’t want to go back to just being one half of the equation

  * * *

  It had all the heart and soul we were looking for, plus the math images that make you think of a guy and a girl sitting close together helping each other with homework.

  So before we had any real budget or plan or album in the works, I got in there and recorded it, and I found out I loved being in the studio. Not as much as performing live, but a lot. The night we finished it, Carin was going to drive me home, but we ended up driving around and around Atlanta, listening to my song over and over. We stopped for ice cream at some point, but I think we drove around until about three in the morning. To this day it’s still Carin’s favorite song, and she constantly tells me I have to sing it someday at her wedding. It was a great song. What killed me was not being able to put it out into the world. We had to be very strategic about the first single to be released.