Cancel Chris Brown

The sky above Toronto’s Rogers Stadium exploded on a late August night before “Take You Down,” the bedroom song from the 36-year-old R&B star Chris Brown’s 2007 sophomore album, Exclusive, Soak every standing surface. When he said, “Oh, girl, I love the way you talk when you rain on me,” during the pathetic “2012,” the microphone was dripping. But the rain did not prevent the singer from rising into the air with a seat belt and walking on the moon during the song “Look at Me Now.” Breezy Bowl XX, the tour celebrating the 20th anniversary of Brown’s debut, makes a not-so-subtle case for the singer as a pivotal force in R&B, hip-hop and pop through dozens of disparate highlights. Answers the hypothesis What if Chris Brown headlined the Super Bowl, mesh football jerseys and everything? He thrives on extracting awe How did he do that?!

With his monthly Spotify listener count approaching 60 million — in the same ballpark as Beyoncé and Lana Del Rey — Brown feels as inescapable an artist as ever. But his energy and perseverance on stage are intensified online, where the singer has confirmed that he is a media pariah. “I’ve been doing my best for the last 20 years and I realize that I will never be recognized for anything more than drama,” he posted on Instagram in June in response to some rhetoric about which artists belong on the list of all-time R&B greats. He wants us to know that the tour and the cultural phenomena that followed it — the couples’ intimate poses in his meet-and-greets, the sold-out shows — are an organic accomplishment in the fandom, a testament to the “us against the world” bond the artist shares with the tireless Team Breezy community. It was not always certain that the tour, which began in June and ends this month, would go ahead as planned. The European leg was booked this summer due to developments in a case involving a 2023 London club brawl in which Brown allegedly assaulted a music producer. In May, the singer was arrested in Manchester and charged with causing grievous bodily harm with intent and spent nearly a week in custody. He now faces a potential prison sentence of more than 16 years on multiple criminal charges in the UK; The trial is scheduled for next year. He pleaded “not guilty” to all charges against him. If he’s taken away, at least everyone on the planet gets to see him at his best.

Brown’s own account of his reign suggests that he was denied real and lasting redemption for the mistakes he made at his worst. He said in June that he should not be compared to other artists, because the singers in his band don’t have to “do all this crap on their own without help and the media is constantly messing with them.” To be sure, there are people who will never forgive Brown for beating up his ex-girlfriend Rihanna in 2009, or for abusing his ex Karrueche Tran, after which she received a restraining order against him in 2017. Brown and his fans say the press and society should pay more attention to what he went through: He witnessed domestic violence against his mother as a child and was diagnosed with PTSD in 2014. It caters to people who see the good in it. “It’s not that I have a careless look,” he told Shannon Sharp in 2023. “I don’t care about making you think I’m a great person.” Team Breezy catches him as he falls. He is the shepherd of the flock. Have sex with one of his fans on social media and you risk Brown showing up in your mentions.

He is a symbolic figure, a saint and benefactor of the abolished. People who have come to a certain peace with the most horrific events in his backstory see someone who turns his life around but is unable to escape the implication that he is a psychological box. Here is a young black man from a small southern town suffering from accusations that he is dangerous and still paying the price for old sins he committed before he could legally drink. Here is someone who has industrial powers conspiring against him.

But it’s hard to reconcile the past decade of hip-hop’s contemporary radio presence with the idea that Brown is radioactive. Breezy Bowl’s 50-plus song list doesn’t even cover half of his still-growing collection. Bulletin board “Hot 100” entries. Rhythmic streaming is a magnet for anyone who has faced criticism for collaborating with it. Drake, whose entourage was involved in a brawl with Brown at a nightclub in 2012, bounced back by the end of the decade to join him in the diamond-certified No Direction. Chloe Bailey went through hell for working with Brown on 2023’s “How Does It Feel,” then scoring the only entry on the Hot R&B Songs chart with her for her debut album. Nickelodeon and Broadway star Leon Thomas’ “Mutt” was slipping off the Hot 100 list this year when a guest appearance from Brown propelled it into the top 20, a first for Thomas. Brown is the guy you can reach out to to give a single wings in the traditional R&B and trap markets.

He’s had this Midas touch ever since we met him. The appeal of Breezy Bowl is the idea that Brown is on the R&B-soul-funk-pop continuum to succeed Usher, the Jacksons, and James Brown. He came out of Virginia in 2005, when hip-hop dominated pop culture, with “Run It!”, a song hard enough for the clubs but sweet enough for Nickelodeon and thus the rare “Hot 100” No. 1 debut single. The idea of ​​a “millennial Michael Jackson” was introduced very early on. Brown’s 2007 video “Wall to Wall” attempts to be a “thriller” of a decade of bloody war code Sequels and vampire romance novels. His ability to adapt and slide into the eras of crunk, EDM, hyphy and trap indicates a rare gift. But everyone got more from Mike than they planned. Talent was never in doubt, but the nobility of the ship was often under review. Domestic violence crushed the once-crisp image that was suitable for Doublemint chewing gum ads, necessitating a new musical account that took a few spins to install. The motivational platitudes that followed 2007 Exclusive – “Turn the Music Up” and “Beautiful People” – could be as cliched as they were. But Swizz Beatz’s raucous “I Can Transform Ya,” Brown’s first single after his 2009 prison sentence, pointed to hip-hop as the core of his development. Collaborations in rap music have increased. In late 2010, the blazing single “Deuces” featured an extended version of remixes featuring Drake, Kanye West, Rick Ross, T.I., Andre 3000, and Fabolous.

With a handful of A-list co-signs, Brown leaned into a bad boy image that met the winning fusion of smooth hooks and tough talk by contemporaries like Drake. Collaborations with Los Angeles rapper Tyga, like 2013’s “Loyal” and 2015’s “Ayo,” track a shift in tone as the singer and rhymer began to define himself as rich and obnoxious. The previous single suggested that you should pay attention, “When a Rich Negro Wants You.” Breezy Bowl takes a sweeping effort to reconcile all of these movements and acknowledge the perilous bounce of 2009-2010. A video after a performance of “Transform” shows clips of the teenage Brown’s triumphs, then focuses on memories of the shame that nearly ended his career. “I remember being in my house, for months at a time, trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life,” he says in voiceover. Solitude allowed time for self-improvement and honing the craft, which the setlist reinforces as it winds through a series of sombre and reflective songs — “Deuces,” 2012’s “Don’t Judge Me.” Brown then performs lap dances for women pulled from the audience during “Take You Down,” occasionally kissing them. The final hour of the concert goes through minor hits in the chart. The aging but inescapable duets of Drake and Young Thug highlight Brown’s current station: he’s one of the elders of hip-hop radio who doesn’t always go gold or platinum but remains a chart-topper. He can play an angelic contemporary R&B tone in her songs as well as being a big spender for rappers like Gunna. He can dabble in Afrobeats with Nigerian singer Wizkid, and this year’s breakout single “It Depends” with Breezy Bowl opener Bryson Tiller verges on rap production. He’s a fountain of hooks when nothing gets in his way (and even when it does).

Could someone so widely wanted really be so cursed? This view seems skewed and outdated. Brown’s reviewers were never uniformly negative – “while listeners cannot help but be reminded of his fall from grace.” Bulletin board In 2009, “Brown also shows us graffiti “He’s still a tremendous talent” – and the criticism has only softened. But the 2023 double album 11:11 Appearing on “Best of the Year” lists and receiving a Grammy Award for Best R&B Album – his first win since 2012 luck – He didn’t break through the everyone-hates-Chris routine. (Did the Grammys hate Chris, or was the competition just astronomical with Frank Ocean and Beyoncé’s tighter acts vying for the same genre win throughout the mid-2000s?) Now, the war over how Brown should be viewed is long over, no matter how much of an outcast he played. His voice transports many people to happier, less terrifying times. The glimmer of lost innocence in his tone proved more attractive than anything he did to turn the audience off. Very little writing about the Breezy Bowl has framed it as a response to a moment when prison time might be at hand. Brown’s summer was about an enduring generational talent, not a mainstream villain.