At Home With Gerald Levert

Ebony, July, 1999 by Laura B. Randolph

WHEN his real estate agent first showed him the house, Gerald Levert says he had two immediate thoughts: (1) No way am I buying this place; and (2) I have to get myself a new Realtor. "You should have seen this place when I bought it," Levert says of the modest, split-level residence on the outskirts of Cleveland, which he purchased nearly three years ago. "If you had seen it before we started working on it, you wouldn't believe it is the same house."

That's because in many ways it isn't. Before he moved in, Gerald gutted the small, decades-old residence, transforming it into a gorgeous four-bedroom, six-bathroom home, complete with music room, movie theater and an indoor swimming pool.

"It had all this land--11 acres," Gerald says, explaining why he decided to invest so much time and money redesigning, renovating and reconstructing the house. "I just fell in love with the space and the privacy of the place. I look out my window and I see deer running around in back and geese on the lawn. When I come off the road, this house is my retreat. Just being here gives me a sense of calm and peace."

A sense of calm and peace was the one thing the award-winning 32-year-old singer/songwriter/producer was desperately in need of after going through a turbulent year in which he coped with one of the greatest personal losses of his life. The breakup of his year-long engagement to a woman he was deeply in love with left Gerald, to use his words, "messed up in my head." So deep, in fact, were the holes the breakup left in Gerald's life and heart that he thought about quitting the business.

"I was so devastated by the situation," he confides, "I didn't want to do music anymore." Truth be told, even before his heart was broken, at home--not on stage--was where Gerald wanted to be. "The relationship made me want to be there with her," says Gerald, "not on the road."

By his own admission, Gerald's grief over the breakup was made more intense than normal by one sad but inescapable fact: He was responsible for it. "Everything that happened was my fault, and I'll never deny that," he says. "I just got caught up in this crazy business."

Meaning exactly what? That he wasn't ready for the hard requirements of love, or that he couldn't say no to the celebrity lifestyle--the parties, the power trips, the plethora of willing women? Gerald stares out the window as if considering how much more to reveal. "Let's put it like this," he finally answers, "I didn't have control when I should have. That's basically what happened."

As painful as it was, the broken heart Gerald suffered had a silver lining: It left the Grammy-nominated singer--who, in little more than a decade, has sold more than 9 million albums and produced or written more than 15 No. 1 hits, including Barry White's "Practice What You Preach" and Chuckie Booker's "Games"--more sensitive, more reflective, and therefore even more creative than usual.

"The stuff I was writing had a lot to do with what went on in my relationship and why it turned out the way it did," says Gerald of the songs on his latest platinum album, Love and Consequences. "While I didn't plan it that way, when I listened to it after it was done, I said, `Oh, man, this is all about me.'"

As he did on Love and Consequences, Gerald is writing and producing most of the songs on his upcoming album, 66 to 99, which he plans to release this fall. "I was born in 1966 and here we are in 1999," he says, explaining the title. "I'm doing a lot of different types of music, music I've enjoyed listening to from those years. I have a Sam Cooke-type tune, a Curtis Mayfield-type song, some stuff with rap, all kinds of songs."

All kinds, that is, except the ubiquitous sex-me anthems, what Gerald calls the "freak me all over all day and all night" songs. "I just can't see myself singing about sex all the time," he says. "I can't sing those songs on stage because I don't feel like that. I feel I can be sexy, but I just can't sing those worthless songs about doing it all night long, [songs] that don't really mean anything. If I did a song like that, it would have to be something that really meant something for a woman and a man."

Like one of his favorite songs, the R. Kelly-produced "Men Like Us," whose lyrics--Men like us won't let you down/Men like us we've been around/We've had it all and now it's time to settle down--Gerald says, reflect "where I am in my life right now."

"That song is a testament for any man who's been through the club scene and had all the different women," he says. "You grow out of that. How long can you run the streets? You just get tired. You get to the point where you need something real."

Like marriage and family. "My biggest regret is that I didn't wait to get married to have kids," says Gerald, a father of three. "Don't get me wrong. I love my kids more than anything in the world, but if I had it to do over again, I'd wait until I was married to become a father."

Ironically, it was his own father, the legendary rhythm and blues singer Eddie Levert of the O'Jays, who Gerald says inspired his recent weight loss. "They found out my dad had high blood pressure and they put him in the hospital," says Gerald. "I was really scared for him and also for myself because the doctors told us it had a lot to do with the way you eat. When I heard that, I was like, `This, is not cool; I have to do something.'"