It’s a good thing that Austin Brown doesn’t physically resemble his iconic aunt and uncle. It’ll help Brown cultivate his own identity away from the enormous shadows they cast as he releases his single, “Target Practice.”
It looks like Brown is going to attack the dance space right off the rip with his debut album, 85 (the year he was born). The first single, the Rodney Jerkins-produced “Target Practice,” is a decent, fast-paced pop single that highlights his vocal skills and may enable him to showcase his dancing abilities in the ensuing video, something that seems to be a hereditary gift bequeathed by his immediate ancestral line.
Brown is the youngest child of the quiet, drama-free Rebbie Jackson, the oldest of the late, legendary Michael Jackson’s sisters. Old-school heads will remember that Rebbie scored a top 10 Billboard hit with the MJ-penned “Centipede” (see YouTube for those too young to recall]). He’d love for Rihanna to remake “Centipede.”
“[MJ] told me it was one of his favorite songs that he ever worked on,” Brown reflects to MTV. “I wish somebody would redo it, like Rihanna.”
He calls his aunt, Janet Jackson, his best friend and closest confidante. He is a singer, songwriter, dancer and can play the guitar, keyboards, bass and drums, all at the tender age of 24.
Of course, by the age of 24, Brown’s uncle, the King of Pop, had revolutionized MTV, album marketing and promotion, had scored two immortal records (Off the Wall and Thriller) and was well on his way to making the best-selling CD the world had ever seen. But we digress.
To nurture his burgeoning skills, Brown got some vocal training from Michael when he was younger. But perhaps out of fear and loathing of the music game, Rebbie raised her son out of the spotlight. Therefore, Brown sought counseling from Auntie Janet on music and life.
“[Janet] is the person that I talk to the most in my family. She knows everything about me. If I couldn’t tell my mom, I would tell her. She would take drives with me and talk to me like I was a normal person,“ he says.
Trying to get “his weight up” musically, Brown started taking gymnastics. “I told [producer] Rodney [Jerkins], ‘I’m going to flip.’ He was like, ‘You’re out of your mind.’ So I started taking footage of it and I was like, ‘Look I can do a back flip.’ “
It’ll take some musical acrobatics for Brown to forge his own space in the music game. –terry shropshire
