As a 29 yr old male, Bieber Fever isn't something that I would expect my doctor to find at my next check-up.  I made the mistake of leaving a ticket stub (pictured below) in the studio recently and thanks to both Chris' & Dave I haven't lived it down yet.

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YES. I, DIGITAL, WENT TO SEE THE JUSTIN BIEBER MOVIE.

And here's why ....

Last year Justin was slated to appear in concert at the Cajundome. My first thought was "OMG, it's gonna be insanity." Before that concert announcement ... I was very familiar with "Justin Bieber." being that I work with a lot of record labels as music director of Hot 107.9. I can remember a few in particular that always said

"people don't get it yet, but when the do it's gonna be huge."

..and boy were they right. Justin had millions of viewers on YouTube. He was discovered by Scooter Braun and with the backing of industry heavyweight Usher, Bieber was working non-stop to jump start his music career on a direct path to superstardom. I can remember getting his first single ... looking at the cover thinking "Who is this 18 yr old Abercrombie dude?" (see picture below) ... and after I put the CD in, I then asked myself .. "Who is this 12 yr old girl, and where is that Abercrombie dude?"

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A few weeks later, one of my record reps was in town and I asked "Yo, what's the deal with this kid Justin Bieber? ... he looks older than he sounds." [Come to find out, Justin was barely 15 at the time] He told me,

"this kid is the real deal ... he just wants to skateboard around and he loves people."

He also brought up Justin being very young which has made a lot of radio programmers very hesitant, even though Justin had this huge social media fanbase. He was right, because I totally got it ... I understood that this kid was the next big thing waiting to happen ... he just needed "that one single." --- then along came "Baby."

I don't know if there has been a song within the last 5 years that STUCK in your head the way "Baby" did. Whether you loved it, hated it, or could care less either way ... you can't deny that the melody just STUCK (you're probably humming it right now.) - not only was it catchy.... the label threw Ludacris on the track to give it some radio/street "cred." -- and it worked .. over and over and over... it REALLY worked.

Fast forward to Sunday August 1, 2010 .. Justin Bieber live in concert at the Cajundome. The concert had sold out months ago in just a few minutes. When we got there to set up early in the day, at a time when normally you may see a handful of people hoping to get a glance at the back gate, there were LINES (plural) that were already wrapping around the Cajundome. Sean Kingston & Iyaz were supporting Bieber on his tour and we had interviews with all the artists scheduled for that day. IT WAS HOT, (if you were there you remember.) so naturally Sean Kingston didn't want to come outside and sweat for his interview, so I had to head back to his bus to chat with him and even though it was Sean's interview slot, Bieber and Iyaz were also hanging out on the bus as well (like I said, it was HOT.) So here I am, talking about Sean Kingston's latest single and his time on the My World 2.0 tour, and an ALL OUT X-BOX fight breaks out on the bus between Bieber, Iyaz, Sean and all the rest of the crew ... luckily, I caught it all on tape (listen below)

It was my first time talking to Sean one on one, as well as my first time talking to Justin one on one, and I saw exactly what that record label rep told me months back .. "he was just this cool kid who loved people." So while I still didn't rush out to buy his latest CD or download his latest single and make custom shirts professing my love .. I had respect for the kid and ultimately I had respect for where he came from. He didn't come from Disney, or famous parents. He came from a single parent household in Canada and was discovered on YouTube... and was still a pretty cool kid. So when his movie came out, I told myself ... I'm gonna check it out .. I'm gonna see this kid's story .. and i did. Not a bad flick. Some of the fan freakouts were a little much for me, but all in all it was a cool flick. It's gonna be interesting to watch this kid grow up, kinda how my parents watched the people that we view as music icons now grow up. MJ, Madonna, Prince, Stevie etc. (just imagine if YouTube existed back then.)

So, basically what I'm saying is ... yeah .. I saw the Justin Bieber movie. Don't judge me. LOL

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