Justin Bieber Offered An Ultimatum By Manager Scooter Braun
It's not always easy being Justin Bieber. The pop star has certainly exhibited some very public growing pains in the last year that have made him the target of public scrutiny and gossip headlines.
In the March issue of British GQ, manager Scooter Braun opens giving the 19-year-old an ultimatum in the wake of all the attention.
"I think to help him get through that I have to hold him to a higher standard. I can't baby him, I can't tell him, 'You know what you deserve, to say f--- everybody, this is unfair.' I can say there is only one way around this, either we quit and let you try and find a normal life or you realize that this is what this is and we've got to keep fighting," he says in the magazine.
"And you're going to hate me some days because I'm going to say you can't throw a punch. You want to go out there and you want to bash their heads in and say this isn't fair; you want to say you don't know me. But the only way you're going to win them over is by being better than they are."
Braun recently spent time with Bieber in Panama after he was arrested under suspicion of DUI and drag racing in Miami last week. He has since returned from the vacation, where he was reportedly also joined by Bieber's mentor, Usher.
"It's the same as being with a kid growing up, as a parent. There is a point where you guide them and there's a point where you feel like you've planted enough seeds and you watch them make mistakes," he tells GQ. "My responsibility is to always be there when they fall, always be there to help them get back up. But at some point I need to let them fail, because if they don't they're going to have no humanity."
As Bieber continues to dodge tabloid reports in 2014, he had an equally gossip-filled 2013, like when a female fan filmed him sleeping in a hotel room in Brazil.
"He said that people just assume the worst things about him before he does anything," Braun recalled, before breaking down the conversation he had with Bieber last year.
" 'I had a woman film me while I was sleeping, who I've never met before,' he said. 'She could have stabbed me, who knows what she could have done. And she was in the house and she filmed me.
" 'Instead of people saying how incredibly creepy that was, what an invasion of privacy, they are assuming I slept with her and she was a prostitute. I've got to deal with that, I'm 19 [and] every single day I've got to deal with stuff like that. People thinking I had a baby or thinking I spit on my fans, just assuming the absolute worst about me.' "
Braun added, "We've talked that sometimes he doesn't help himself because he's so angry about it. But no one really understands what he's living [through], only him."
