EXCLUSIVE: Chris Brown and Tina Davis’ Relationship Revealed

With all the news breaking about Chris Brown’s manager Tina Davis being the “mystery woman” behind the text messaging controversy, GIANT reveals that Brown and Davis have always had a unique relationship.

In our September 2007 coverstory, Brown revealed how Davis took him into her New Jersey home while he was shopping a deal:

Tina Davis, then a senior vice president at the label [Def Jam], saw Brown’s talent and told him not to sign the deal. “Tina was like, ‘I’m not signing that agreement with you. They not being right.’ And this was before she became my manager. She coulda just been like, ‘Oh, alright, I’m gonna make my money anyway.’” Davis was fired from Def Jam not long after. Brown called her the same day and asked her to be his manager. He hadn’t signed the Def Jam deal. She moved him in with her in New Jersey and got him a deal with Jive Records, now home to R&B’s ruling class: R. Kelly, Justin Timberlake, T-Pain, Joe and Huey.

“Me and T.J. used to stay at Tina’s house all the time. We thought she was super rich!” Brown says. “She lived in a regular neighborhood, and we was from the ghetto. We was wearing a whole bunch of dirty clothes. She would buy us fresh things every week, new sneakers.” And he started doing his schoolwork through an Internet home-school program partially because it seemed like his friends in Virginia were hating on him anyway. Brown had been back to Virginia for his ninth and 10th grade basketball seasons but had been getting into fights, so after that, it was a wrap. He was too busy learning how to become a pop star.

“I did weeks of media training because I was so country,” he says. “My mentality was still Harlem and Tappahannock. I was stuck in the ‘hood mind-set.”

Brown and Davis would also watch movies about exploitation in the music industry-such as the Sam Cooke story about how he had his publishing stolen-stories that, Davis says, helped Brown understand what he needed to do to get to a certain place. “He was learning how to talk right, how to sit right,” Davis remembers. She would fall asleep during the movies, and when she woke up, he would still be there watching, taking it all in, transfixed. “He was like a sponge.”

For more on the Chrihanna drama, check out these links below:

Who is Tina Davis?

LAPD Notes Confirm Chris Brown Threatened to Kill Rihanna

Chris Brown Charged With 2 Felonies

Is Chris Brown Violent?

Rihanna’s Own Troubled Past

And to check out Chris and Rihanna in happier times, check out our gallery here!