Remember When We Used To Like Tyrese?

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What the hell happened to Tyrese Gibson?

It seems like the former R&B crooner, who used to woo us with tracks like “Sweet Lady” has seemed to have crashed and burned. For whatever reason, controversy, trouble and the most obvious question: What the heck are you thinking?! just seem to follow Gibson. The latest being a series of ill-conceived thoughts, courtesy of Urban Daily, who has compiled a list of the Transformer’s star dumbest tweets, which includes this gem:

Making Love and images of your kids start popping up in your mind cause you love being in there so much….

I don’t know about the rest of you but thinking about small children while having sexual intercourse sounds like the stuff that got Jerry Sandusky in trouble.

Seriously, whatever happened to the gorgeous bald headed young man, sitting on the back of the bus, drinking soda and singing “Always Coca-Cola” to a Nia Long look-alike? Now he is like Eddie Kane from The Five Heartbeats after he tried to come back to the group. Remember that part in the film when Eddie wobbled up to his former band members out in the parking lot, wearing the sparkling silver vest, and sky blue blouse, singing in a crackhead voice, Night’s Like This I Wish That Raindrops Would Fall? Well yeah, that’s Tyrese.

I’m not saying that he is a crackhead. What I am saying is that somewhere along his career, he has lost that finesse that made us become fans in the first place. It’s not like the 34 year old South Central native doesn’t have everything going for him: endorsement deals, modeling contracts, movies, a couple of Grammys and a best-selling book. With that kind of resume, he should be at the top of the multi-hyphenates in entertainment. However, even with the roles in both the Fast and Furious and Transformer franchises, he is, at best, a D-list celebrity, known more for his inflammatory tweets than his actual catalog of work. I guess this is what happens when you fire your management team and decide to be your own PR person.

Or maybe it because he is political?

Last year, Gibson was kicked off and out of a Delaware radio station for what he said, via twitter of course, was his on-air stance against liquor stores being located near schools. However the station manager said that Tyrese’s condescending language, including calling the call-in listeners “homies,” was the reason why he was asked to leave the building and his songs banned from that station’s airwaves.

To be fair to Gibson, calling listeners “homies,” which is usually thought of as a term of endearment, doesn’t seem like a barrable offense so there might be a kernel of truth to the whole liquor store stance story? However when you consider Gibson’s other very public faux paus, you can also see where along the lines the station manager might have felt that Tyrese was acting like a Divo.

First there is the 2009 accusation of domestic violence, where it was alleged that Gibson attacked his three month pregnant live in girlfriend after a verbal dispute. Gibson has always maintained that it was a misunderstanding, and the unidentified pregnant girlfriend later retracted the allegations, however the situation was serious enough for the police to investigate.

And then there is his visit last year to Howard University, where he caused a minor uproar over suggestions that all men cheat and that women need to get over it. If his foot wasn’t far enough in his mouth, Gibson later decided to celebrate Black History Month with a bit of advice to the sisters in the form of a “women be all stuck up and Shyte” video rant.

The highlight includes:

“I want to say to all the women out there, especially black women in particular, y’all are on this independent kick. “I don’t need no man, I’m independent.” I want y’all to know the difference. There is a very big difference. Independence in the eyes of a man is when we say we want an independent woman; we don’t want a woman that’s [depending on] her sexi and nice body to help her get through life.

You don’t wanna work, you don’t want to go to college or school, you’re not inspired to do anything on any level to try and help further yourself on any level. You just want to be sexi and free-load… nobody wants that, as a man.”

It certainly sounds like someone is confusing independence, the act of self-sufficiency, with dependency, which is the act of reliance on others for survival. And maybe that speaks more to his problem than the women he dates. Anyway, alienating his black female audience doesn’t seem like a sound business decision – unless he is going for the “Jody” in Baby Boy route. For some reason, many black women love that character. But for me, when he decided to stop being the musical version of the romantic guy that would send flowers just because, or lay a jacket over a puddle and became the angry dude, who gets crazy with you because you don’t give him your phone number, I stopped being entertained. And no long-rumored super group with fellow R&B performers Tank and Ginuwine and concert tour called “Women Only,” will change that.

Photo courtesy of WENN.com

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