If you were born in the late eighties or early nineties, you might remember a little song from 2001 by the name of “Peaches and Cream”. If you are not familiar with this little jingle from R&B quartet 112, head over to YouTube now and watch the music video. Apart from perhaps forever changing the way you think about peaches and cream, hopefully viewing the clip will also help you to appreciate just how long ago 2001 was – because that’s how long professional song writer Jason “Poo Bear” Boyd has been in the game.
“Peaches and Cream” was Poo Bear’s first number-one hit on the R&B Billboard charts. incredibly, Bear wrote the song when he was just 18-years-old. If you still need some perspective on the magnitude of Poo Bear’s endurance, at the beginning of 2001 Harry Potter still hadn’t received his first wand yet and Frodo was minding his own business in the Shire.
Also, if you’re thinking that you haven’t heard any of Poo Bear’s work recently, then you are almost definitely wrong. Poo Bear is in fact the songwriter behind Justin Bieber’s record-breaking 2015 album Purpose – apparently writing “What do you mean?” in just 15 minutes. Bear has also been penning platinum-selling hits since the age of 14 for the likes of, Usher, Ludacris, Chris Brown, Jill Scott, Snoop Dogg, Pink and countless others.
Despite the fickle nature of the music industry and the general brevity of professional song writing careers, 16 years since hit first number-one hit, Poo Bear is till standing. And that is essentially what Redbull’s Poo Bear: Afraid of Forever is all about – the battle to stay relevant in an industry which has forgotten him once already.
Afraid of Forever (directed by award-winning Australian filmmaker Macario De Souza a.k.a Kid Mac who shot to fame post Bra Boys) details Poo Bear’s personal journey from being homeless after a tornado ripped through his family home as a child, to becoming a music writing genius; a journey which saw Bear take a vow at age 14 to never sleep more than 4 hours a night, with the intended purpose of insuring he was always the hardest worker in the game. The documentary also explores Poo Bear’s human side, including his fear of failure, endless need to take care of those around him and deep-seated abandonment issues – which his mother says are evident in the lyrics of another Justin Bieber hit “Where are you now?”. Additionally, Afraid of Forever is interspersed with fascinating behind the scenes footage of the song writing process, from start to finish.
Afraid of Forever is an intriguing story which sees Boyd and song writers in general finally receive some of the credit and recognition they deserve.
Poo Bear: Afraid of Forever is available on Redbull TV from April 29, and you can watch the trailer here.
