They say that all publicity is good publicity, but in the very public ‘Chris Brown bashing Rihanna’ incident this saying might not ring so true. Sure it had the public talking about him, but whether they will continue to buy his music is yet to be determined.
His latest release is Graffiti. The once seemingly innocent 16-year-old, who once sang cutesy tracks like Excuse Me Miss, is now known worldwide for the appalling Rihanna mug shots. The amazing success of Run It and Forever are overshadowed, with likely permanent damage to Brown’s career.
Graffiti is Chris Brown’s third studio album and has him sporting an alternative, Kanye West-esque, futuristic vibe, where he is rocking sunglasses and lots of black. However the music doesn’t really follow the more grown-up vibe the cover implies.
The lead single I Will Transform Ya features Lil Wayne and Swizz Beatz and is a solid effort. The best track is Wait featuring Trey Songz and The Game, where Trey clearly makes the song. The other stand-outs include Girlfriend featuring Lupe Fiasco, What I Do featuring Plies, and the slow jam Crawl which sounds mostly genuine.
As expected, Graffiti includes some ‘his side of the story’ songs, for example So Cold, Lucky Me, which sounds like the boy version of Britney Spears’ Lucky and is equally unappealing, and I’ll Go. He also plugs the fact that he wrote Rihanna’s Disturbia in the fluffy Famous Girl. Brown should probably stick to what he’s best at, typical cocky club hits.
In the past Chris Brown has been compared to Usher and even Michael Jackson thanks to having success so young with a debut number one single and being an insanely talented dancer. Though Usher cheated on his girlfriend and his next album soared with his Confessions, violence against women is a tad harsher than cheating so we can only wait and see what happens to Chris Breezy’s career.
It’s a shame, he had so much potential.
