Who is Kim Ward? Bobby Brown Jr's mother claimed Whitney Houston ‘had a problem’ with her little son
Bobby Brown and Kim Ward's 28-year-old son Bobby Brown Jr was found dead in his Los Angeles home on November 19, 2020. Ward gave birth to Brown Jr (the second of her two children with Brown) less than a year before Brown and Whitney Houston had their daughter Bobbi Kristina. Reports say officers with the Los Angeles Police Department rushed to a "medical emergency" at the home in Encino, California at 1:50 pm on Wednesday. A source told TMZ that officials "do not believe there was foul play involved", but that officers are still investigating at the property. In a statement to CNN, Nick Szatmari, the agent for Brown senior, said he had "no comment" regarding the death. Bobby Jr is the second child that the R&B singer has lost after the death of his daughter, Bobbi Kristina, who was found unconscious in a bathtub in 2015 at the age of 22.
Three days after Bobbi Kristina's death in 2015, Bobby Jr, also an aspiring musician, spoke out on Twitter about people who flocked to follow him. He tweeted, "People really don’t give a f**k about you unless you’re relevant and they don’t love you till you’re famous or gone. I don’t want these follows. Your follows ain’t gonna fill the hole in my heart, and y'all gon unfollow me once you stop caring." The tweet has since been deleted.
Who is Kim Ward?
Kim Ward has known Brown since the time they were around 12. In those days, he was an 11-year-old nobody competing in local talent shows. “At that time he probably wasn’t the cutest,” Ward told Boston Magazine in 2006, recalling their courtship. “There was something about him I just wanted.”
Beirout Cummings, godmother to Brown’s son, said, “Kim was the person who kept Bobby grounded,” adding, “She never cared about his money. If they got in an argument, she would cuss him out, whereas everybody else around him became yes-men.” But, his mother, Carol Brown, was allegedly not too happy with the relationship. “His mother had a lot of say-so,” Sabrina Johnson, who was in the same dance troupe as Ward, told the magazine. “His family, because of Kim’s influence in his life and because of the relationship and bond she had with him, they tried everything they could to break that up.” Cummings agreed. “His mom didn’t want him with Kim,” she says. “Kim had influence with him, and that was threatening to her.”
Ward and Brown had an 11-year long on-and-off affair, but even before she found out about his fling with Whitney Houston, their relationship was filled with worry. After the couple gave birth to LaPrincia in 1989, Brown attended Houston’s 26th birthday party at her New Jersey home and everything changed.
How did the love story end?
Presenting a new aspect of their bond, the article went on to say, “She had loved him when he met Whitney Houston and even when he married her, and though 12 years have passed since then, and she denies it today, it’s easy to believe that she loves him still. And, she says, he is still in love with her.”
Talking about Houston, Kim told the magazine, “I feel like the only thing Whitney had over me was a pretty smile; she had that nice set of teeth,” adding, “I was a little bit younger then. I’m 36 now, so that’s how I felt. [I wasn’t] thinking about her money, her power, I didn’t know none of that. I wasn’t thinking about her credibility.” While Kim gave birth to their son Bobby Jr, Brown married Houston in 1992.
“Why did he get married? The pressure,” Ward said. “It probably was the pressure from his family and from his friends. I mean, she was so big then.” However, Brown's mother Carol denied it saying, “That is so far from the truth...” She added, “If he had married somebody nobody knew — say, Kim — I would have been just as happy. I’m not starstruck, okay?” Ward also claimed Houston refused to warm to Bobby Jr even though she was kind to his older sister, LaPrincia, confessing, “She had a problem with little Bobby.”
What went wrong?
In 2007, Brown was jailed over delinquent child-support payments to Ward and was eventually freed when a DC-area radio station paid his debt. The Boston Magazine report sheds light on the events from 2006 when Brown was ordered to show up at the Norfolk County Probate and Family Court in Canton at 8:30 am on March 24 to explain how it was that he had gone nearly a year without writing a check for child support to Ward, the mother of two of his children. At the time, Brown owed $63,500.
Back then, she had not received any payment for 10 months and was in danger of losing her home in Stoughton, where she lived with their daughter LaPrincia and son Bobby Jr. The article revealed: “The $5,500 payments had been made month after month, reportedly by a company owned by Houston, until May of 2003 when they stopped suddenly.”
In the same interview, Ward said, “I don’t know if Bobby’s broke... but I know the child support was coming. I know that all of a sudden it stopped.” Stressing on how Carol wanted to get her out of the picture, Ward added, “I’m the one who has control over Bobby. I’m the love of Bobby’s life. Even now he’ll sit there and tell me, ‘I should have married you.’ His mother just told me the other night, ‘Bobby told me he should have married you.’ We all know this, this is old news. But she’s coming to me now because she wants him away from Whitney. Years have gone by that I haven’t spoken to this lady, but right now, I’m her best friend.”
Was Bobby Brown a good father?
Despite his misgivings, the article goes on to highlight how Brown was a good father. “‘You know I love my kids!'” Cummings recalled him saying during an emotional phone conversation. “I was like, ‘Bobby, you don’t have to tell me that.'” It also read: “That Brown loves his children is beyond dispute among those who know him best. They laugh at his image as a tough guy, a criminal. Outside of some drug and alcohol problems he’s had, they say, he’s basically a loving father and a ham who likes to make people laugh.”
It went on to say: “The singer cried as he told the judge about the pressures in his life — his wife and his marriage and the press. ‘I don’t know how to say it, but a lot of things have come down on me,' he said. Unmoved, the judge found him in contempt for failing to pay child support and sentenced him to 90 days in jail. Brown cried again as he was handcuffed and led away. Behind him, Ward cried, too.” He spent four days in jail in 2007 after failing to pay up.
Bitter about his relationship, Ward also said in strong words, “I think he needs to leave his wife.” She continued, “I think he knows that, too. But it’s not that easy. Number one, he doesn’t have his own money. I feel like she keeps him back from that because she knows if he has his own money, he’s out of there. He would definitely leave.”