Chris Brown may seem like the pariah of pop since he beat up Rihanna in 2009 and, in later years, was seen on other occasions in violent behavior, particularly towards women. However, the reality is that it has never really been “canceled.” Artists like Drake, Kehlani or even Rihanna herself have continued to collaborate with him, perhaps in pursuit of the right to reintegration, and today his career enjoys enormous popularity: Brown is currently the 34th most listened to artist globally on Spotify, above massively popular names such as Karol G, SZA, Rauw Alejandro or Charli XCX.
His most popular song, ‘Under the Influence’, which is approaching 2 billion streams on spotialso being completely solo, is from 2019, many years after the incident with Rihanna that everyone thought would destroy her career forever. It was touched, yes, especially at the image level. But it was not sunk at all.
His position on Spotify reflects the enormous influence of American artists on the Swedish platform, since in Spain Chris Brown has practically stopped playing for a long time. Even so, their albums have continued to perform well on Billboard and have even accumulated Grammy nominations, despite the fact that critics have not always accompanied them. And the one that Pitchfork has just dedicated to ‘BROWN’, Chris Brown’s new album, is historic: with a score of 1.3 out of 10, it is one of the lowest ever given by the Chicago media to an album, even surpassing the 2.8 that Ed Sheeran received on another occasion.
Many low Pitchfork scores, such as the 0 out of 10 given to Liz Phair or The Flaming Lips, seemed motivated more by an intention to provoke readers and stir up debate on the internet. Others like the 2.7 for ‘The Antidote’ by Morcheeba or the 2.9 for ‘Supermarket’ by Logic seemed to simply respond to their very demanding editorial criteria. Grades below 2 out of 10 have not been common.
However, the assessment of ‘BROWN’ seems to be more serious, and editor Alphonse Pierre claims to have made a huge effort to find something he liked about the album, without success. It describes an album that is empty, inauthentic, overly commercial, emotionally incredible, and completely focused on Chris Brown’s “victim” narrative. In addition, he points out his usual tendency to lengthen the albums to almost thirty songs, which makes the project seem more like a “dump” of unfiltered songs than a conventional album.
The text is naturally contextualized around Chris Brown’s various controversies, so at times the line between musical criticism and moral judgment is blurred. However, Pierre is convincing in justifying the reason for the review, anticipating the typical cliché of “if you don’t like it, why do you listen to it?”, defending that perhaps in the future someone who does not understand the success of Chris Brown will want to read opinions contrary to the popular consensus that keeps him at the top of the lists, even today.
“This album is a good piece of shit” is the lapidary phrase that readers who have decided to subscribe to Pitchfork will read, which since last January has not offered its album reviews openly and even hides its scores. Pierre describes an album “without soul, that desperately seeks success and that does not justify its return to the public eye.” No one quite knows what comeback he’s referring to: at least in the United States, Brown has never gone anywhere, even after being accused of “violently attacking” his own fans. It is to be assumed that Chris Brown will withstand at least this blow.
