Unfortunately, his image was marred with his bloody altercation with then-girlfriend Rihanna in 2009 on the eve of Grammy Awards. He was sentenced to five years of probation and six months of community service after pleading guilty to assault. His career dimmed since then, but not entirely.
Continued to make music and perform in live shows while undergoing his community service and probation. After a series of mixtapes came his fourth set “F.A.M.E.” in 2011 which features hottest music acts like Lil Wayne, Justin Bieber and Wiz Khalifa.
Unfortunately his effort to stay out of trouble was ceased when he displayed violent antics on “Good Morning America”. Luckily for him, it unaffected his album sales as it performed a lot better than its predecessor, giving him his first No. 1 album on Hot 200. Similar thing happened with the single. He returned to the top 10 on Hot 100 at No. 6 with “Look at Me Now” featuring Weezy and Busta Rhymes. On top of that, he got 3 Grammy nominations for his work.
Amidst the somewhat chaos in his personal life, he managed to release a new album “Fortune” and it hit the high note just like his previous effort. It marked his second chart topper. He scored two top-10 singles with “Don’t Wake Me Up” and “Turn Up the Music”. This year also marked his return to the Grammy show with a live performance.
He kept his focus on music through the sixth studio album set for July 16, 2013 release. “Fine China” and “Don’t Think They Know” which samples Aaliyah’s vocals have so far been released, but none broke into the top 10 on the Hot 100 chart. RiRi will still be featured on the album despite their breakup.
Following the release of his album “X” in 2014, Brown returned to the studio with friend and frequent collaborator Tyga for a follow-up to their 2010 mixtape “Fan of a Fan”. In early 2015, they released the record titled “Fan of a Fan: The Album”.
A few months later, Brown made headlines again after it was revealed that he’d secretly fathered a daughter named Royalty. His kid caused another breakup with Tran, but inspired his seventh studio album which he titled “Royalty” after his little girl. The album is set for release on December 18. It has been preceded by a bunch of tracks including “Liquor”, “Zero”, “Back to Sleep”, “Wrist” and “Anyway”. The origins of the group date back to New York City in 1999 when Roger Thomas started the group with his brother, Warren, and five other talented singers they had come to know over the years from singing around the city. Having been in and out of several traditional male groups over the years, Roger developed an affinity for a cappella sounds and a unique ability to create distinct harmony arrangements. When invited to sing at a major a cappella competition in New York, they won the competition, moved onto the nationals and took away two more wins.
Riding the wave of this newfound success and still unable to decide if Naturally 7 were going to be an a cappella group or a traditional band, Roger had a novel idea: they could be both.
He remembered as a child, his brother Warren always wanted a drum set but their mother always told him no because it was just too noisy. So Warren learned to make true drum sounds, with different ways of making the kick, toms, snare, cymbals, and other drum sounds, to compensate for not having real drums to play. Roger approached Warren with the idea from their childhood, and asked if he could become the band’s drummer, so to speak, to accompany Naturally 7 on up-tempo songs.
The idea evolved, and the other band members found unique aspects of their own voices to determine which members would BE which instrument. After all, Roger thought, if the human voice truly was an instrument, it should not matter which instrument it needed to be. And for Naturally 7, it really didn’t matter; “VOCAL PLAY” was born. What is the difference between Vocal Play and a cappella? A cappella is defined as singing without instruments. Vocal Play is singing AS instruments, and BECOMING an instrument with the voice.
What makes Naturally 7 special, is that every instrument sound that they sing is created from the human voice. There are no actual drums, guitars, horns, flutes, or any other instrument that is heard when listening to them perform; it’s the band members playing each of their vocal instruments.
The group has recorded a number of CD’s over the years – “Non Fiction” (2000) the aptly titled “What Is It” (2003), “Christmas …It’s A Love Story” (2004) and “Ready II Fly” (2006). The latter contains the YouTube-hit “Feel It (In the Air Tonight”). Naturally 7’s now famous Paris subway performance of the song, has received over four and a half million hits on YouTube alone and the number of people discovering the group, adds to that figure daily. The song turned into a Top 3-chart-success in France, Belgium and South Africa and made the single charts in other European countries, such as Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Portugal.
In January 2009, the group released a special album, ‘Wall Of Sound’ exclusively for the UK and Ireland, to commemorate their participation at the ‘Royal Variety Performance’. The album contained known material from previous albums, as well as 5 brand-new tracks and entered the British Album-Charts in the first week after release at #29.
They have appeared on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, performing “Stardust” with Michael Bublé. In November 09, the group travelled to Bermuda, taking part in Quincy Jones’ 2009 Bermuda Music Festival performing before an enthusiastic crowd!
February of 2010 saw Naturally 7 spend three weeks in Vancouver as performance guests during the Olympic Winter Games and in March they returned as Special Guests on Bublé’s ‘Crazy Love’-Tour around the World!
Naturally 7’s most recent CD/DVD ‘VocalPlay’, contains self-penned originals such as “SOS (Anybody Out There),” power ballad “If You Love Me”, the Motown-influenced “Ready or Not”, the Latin 768 and a duet with Michael Bublé on the Dinah Washington classic, “Relax Max”. The bonus DVD includes HD Live material from their Madison Square Garden performance, extensive interviews with each group member as well as their video clips.
In the fall of 2010 Naturally 7 along with Ludacris were featured on the title track of Quincy Jones’ new CD – Soul Bossa Nostra that led to a performance on The View in November.
They continued to tour the world with Michael Bublé, receiving standing ovations nightly and rave reviews:
“Openers Naturally 7, a seven –piece vocal group from New York who at one point joined Bublé during his set, delivered a jaw-dropping vocal symposium. To call them an a cappella group would be a gross understatement, for they performed songs with trumpets, electric guitars, bass cello, harmonica, a full drum kit, and more – using only their voices. It was like a striking optical illusion, only aural. (Boston Globe, Nov 2010)
“Rarely does an opener melt the crowd like Naturally 7 did. By the time their half hour set ended, all too soon, many jumped to their feet to give the stellar musicians a standing ovation.”
In February 2011, Naturally 7 performed at the BET Honours, receiving a standing ovation for “Rockit” their Herbie Hancock tribute song. Another stand out moment came in August when they were invited to take part in the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Week Celebrations.
“Silver Bells” became their next collaboration with Michael Bublé, appearing on his multi-million selling and chart topping Christmas album. They also made a guest appearance on his first NBC special and joined him for a performance on The Today Show.
In the spring of 2012 Naturally 7 recorded a DVD in Hamburg “All Natural Live”. In June the group made a return appearance at the Playboy Jazz Festival at the Hollywood Bowl, receiving a standing ovation from the crowd of 18 thousand! They returned for their third consecutive appearance, in 2013.
Two further highlights created a perfect ending for 2012. The group were special guests on Coldplay’s Mylo Xyloto Tour at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, and they performed 32 shows at Europe’s most successful Arena-event “Night Of The Proms”, along with Mick Hucknall and The Jacksons.
This was followed by another duet with Bublé on his most recent chart-topping 2013 album, “To Be Loved”, “Who’s Lovin’ You” the classic Smokey Robinson song.
Between 2012-2015 Naturally 7 continued touring Europe, South America, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, China, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Canada and the U.S.
In June of 2013 they were thrilled to return as Special Guests for superstar Michael Bublé’s record-breaking, 10-show performances at London’s O2 Arena and they continued with Bublé all the way through to the Spring of 2015, in addition to performing their own shows. In April, the group made a TV appearance on Arsenio Hall showcasing “Keep The Customer Satisfied” from their forthcoming CD. During a commercial break they also treated the audience to an exclusive performance of another new cut, “Run Away”.
When not on the road, Naturally 7 were in the studio recording material for a new album called “Hidden in Plain Sight (Vox Maximus Vol.I)”, which was released on February 10, 2015.
The 13-song album includes 2 top-ten singles on Billboard’s US Smooth Jazz Charts – “Need You With Me” and “Life Goes On (Let It Go)”; also N7′s highly emotional version of Coldplay’s “Fix You” and “Galileo”, where Naturally 7 borrows creative licence from Queen’s legendary “Bohemian Rhapsody”, written by Freddie Mercury. Naturally 7′s live-performance of “Galileo” features excerpts from the original ground-breaking Queen video from 1975. “Bohemian Rhapsody” was twice #1 in the UK and topped the charts in many countries around the world.
Their phenomenal talent, coupled with a live show that many consider to be one of the best in the world, has Naturally 7 poised for continued success!
