Robin Thicke: Pretty Fly for a White Guy

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Thicke grew up in Los Angeles, in the center of the entertainment industry. His parents worked in television -- primarily onscreen, but they also composed the theme songs for "Diff'rent Strokes" and "The Facts of Life."

They divorced when Thicke was 7 but lived 15 minutes apart. Thicke and his brother would spend one week with their Bruce Springsteen-loving dad ("He'd go see all five Springsteen concerts in L.A.") and one week with their soul-music-loving mom ("Luther Vandross, Jeffrey Osborne, Whitney Houston -- she had singers on all the time, all day").

"It was a pretty basic childhood," Thicke says. "The only difference is, when your parents are celebrities and you have a barbecue or a party or an Easter egg hunt at your house, you don't get the attention. In most houses, the kids would get that attention, but everybody comes over and your parents are getting all of it. That either creates a kid who's hungry and craves that attention, or a kid who's like: 'I don't need any of that, I'm going to close my door and stay away.' I became the kid who was like: 'Look at me! Look at me!' . . . That need for attention is probably what made me want to sing and be a performer."

Thicke was enamored with black music from an early age, influenced partly by his mother's musical tastes but also intrigued by the way N.W.A. somehow made the killing fields of South Central sound alluring. "When I was 8 or 9," he says, "you pretty much had to decide: Are you listening to Guns N' Roses or are you listening to N.W.A.? Which side of the culture are you following? My brother had Metallica on his wall; I was playing N.W.A. along with Stevie Wonder."

Thicke eventually began to teach himself to play the piano: The first soul song he learned was Brian McKnight's "One Last Cry," a weepy quiet-storm ballad that became a hit when Thicke was in high school. "It has a lot of complex chords," he says. "So once I figured out how to play that, I could pretty much write about 10 songs."

He also acquired a perfect nickname: "All my friends used to call me Brian McWhite," he says with a laugh.

Thicke attended Montclair College Preparatory School in the San Fernando Valley, a school whose alumni include Cher, Nicole Richie, Frank Sinatra Jr. and Michael Jackson. He had a high, airy tenor and a wardrobe full of hip-hop brands. Sometimes, he says, he'd show up at school with a copy of one black magazine or another.

"The black kids were like: 'Why the [expletive] you got an Ebony magazine?' " he recalls. "Well, where else could I read about my favorite groups, like Jodeci? I couldn't read about them in Rolling Stone and those other magazines. . . . But I probably was doing it to say 'I'm down' in some ways, too."

He formed a group -- "a white guy and three black guys" -- and they recorded a four-song demo that, he says, sounded like a cross between Jodeci and Boyz II Men. They called themselves Az-One and wore natty outfits inspired by the popular groups of the day, right down to the accessories: "I always had a cigar or a cane."

McKnight himself heard the demo and signed him to a production deal through Interscope (so much for Az-One!). By the age of 16, Thicke was writing songs for other artists, beginning with R&B singer Brandy. "I was immediately in the game," he says. "I was a pretty cocky Brian McWhite."

Thicke recorded a solo album but it was never released, and he was let go by Interscope. Still, he continued to write and eventually began producing for other artists: Christina Aguilera, Pink, Michael Jackson, Mya, Marc Anthony. "I was on five of the top 20 albums in the country at 20 years old," Thicke says. "It was a great run. But I was hiding. I was a singer and I wasn't singing."