Empire Of The Sun
Ice On The Dune
Everyone makes mistakes in life and is due a second chance, right?
Yes, but you are severely tempted to make an exception for Chris Brown, the infamous R&B star who beat up his former girlfriend Rihanna and continues to exhibit signs of being a deeply unpleasant and loathsome individual.
On this latest offering he is once again powered by a one-track mind that borders on the psychotically disturbed. Brown is all about "sexing" and boasting about his extraordinary prowess in that area. Typical is the charming Strip, wherein he treats a strip club like a sweet shop: "Which one I'm a take home? I wanna see your legs in the air, don't worry 'bout your hair…"
When he refers to his tainted past, it's with a mixture of faux-repentance and passive-aggressive defiance. His claims to be a changed man are deeply unconvincing. The supposed mea culpa of Don't Judge Me is less an apology, more of a threat: "Don't judge me and I won't judge you – cause it could get ugly…"
Musically, his recent number one Turn Up The Music and Don't Wake Me Up are smart floor-fillers, but his default mode is efficiently slick, utterly bog-standard Autotune-heavy R&B. Chris Brown, then: a great dancer, an average pop star, and a hideous human being.
