I've never held artists to a particularly high moral standard. I was never bothered by Woody Allen marrying his step-daughter; I certainly didn't care when Kanye West upstaged Taylor Swift at an MTV award show; and I'm almost disturbingly good at not dwelling on how truly heinous R. Kelly's alleged crimes were. Yet as good as I am at brushing off even some of the most vile artist indiscretions, I made an exception to root against Chris Brown after his early 2009 assault of his then-girlfriend Rihanna. It seemed only fair that as punishment for bloodying an innocent pop princess, Brown should be stripped of his stardom.
Of course, that was an easy judgment for me to make, since unlike Woody Allen, Kanye West or R.Kelly, I'd never much cared for Brown as an artist. He never struck me as an irreplaceable talent. His voice too often takes on a tiresome, whiney tone; he's not a distinguished songwriter, and there are plenty of stronger R&B vocalists who could better sing the songs Brown didn't write (Mario, Omarion and Lloyd, chief among them). If Brown should have to prematurely retire from music, that seemed like no great loss.
And so, outraged by the ubiquitous police photo of Rihanna's battered face and enabled by my indifference to his music, I longed to see Brown fail. I suspect other critics felt the same way. Many took out their disgust with Brown in almost universally eviscerating reviews of his post-Rihanna album Graffiti, which is currently ranked as the 16th worst reviewed on Metacritic, below abominations by Jennifer Love Hewitt, Ashlee Simpson and Nickelback.
For all of its faults, though, Graffiti isn't actually worse than Chris Cornell's Scream, as its Metacritic score would have you believe. Even its harshest reviews acknowledged the record isn't a complete disaster. “Musically, Graffiti is a fairly ingratiating affair: The production is clean and often lively, and Brown sings well enough,” The A.V. Club's Michaelangelo Matos conceded, “The problem is what he's singing.” Like Matos, Allmusic's Andy Kellman took issue with Brown's self-pitying lyrics. “Maybe his supporters should be considerate and assist in putting the young man out of his misery,” Kellman wrote. “If they stop purchasing his recordings, concert tickets, and merchandise, the evil entertainment industry, all media outlets, and predatorial heartbreakers will lose interest and loosen their grip on him.” In truth, I suspect that most critics were less disgusted by the album's occasionally ugly sentiments than by the mere idea of Chris Brown releasing an album at all.
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For a full year after his arrest, Brown's career dangled by a thread, while observers like me hoped for its collapse. Immediately after the assault, many radio stations dropped him from their playlists (hurray!), but by fall 2009 he had returned to the airwaves with “I Can Transform Ya,” an insipid Transformers tie-in buoyed by a verse from a white-hot Lil Wayne (drat!) Sales of his all-important Graffiti album didn't make his commercial fate any clearer. With about 100,000 copies moved in its first week, it was a disappointment compared to his previous albums, but hardly the nail-in-the-coffin flop his detractors hoped.
In a bizarre Twitter rant that implied his sales were bleaker than they actually were, Brown accused major retailers of conspiring against the record: “im tired of this shit. major stores r blackballing my cd. not stockin the shelves and lying to costumers. what the fuck do i gotta do…” “WTF… yeah i said it and i aint retracting shit” “im not biting my tongue about shit else… the industry can kiss my ass” “thx again to my real fans. u dont go unnoticed .love yall” “look at what mj had to deal with and still came out on top”
Of course, there was no evidence that the big boxes were plotting against Brown, but there was a certain Sarah Palin-esque brilliance to his paranoid allegations. By so shamelessly playing the victim cardhe even evoked Michael Jackson, the patron saint of persecuted musiciansBrown rallied his base, which was still larger than most observers might have guessed. (For all the outrage in the media, there was a considerable contingent that sided with Brown after the incident. A friend of mine who taught at an inner Milwaukee high school bemoaned how the girls in his class had lined up behind Brown and condemned Rihanna for bringing the incident on herself, an attitude that Oprah Winfrey repudiated on a highly hyped episode of her talk show that March. The greatest tragedy of Rihanna's assault may be how it reinforced a blame-the-victim mentality in some of the populations most at risk of domestic abuse.)
If nothing else, Brown's angry, defensive online rants at least seemed spirited and genuine, something that couldn't be said of his apologies. His first apology attempt, a cold YouTube video tardily released five months after the assault and seemingly filmed in his lawyer's office, did little to sway cynics. Even worse was an appearance on “Larry King Live” where Brown dubiously claimed he didn't remember the incident. Brown recanted soon after in an embarrassing written statement: “Of course I remember what happened.”
The turning point in Brown's long atonement tour didn't arrive until 16 months after the assault, when Brown performed a Michael Jackson tribute at last summer's BET Awards. His physically and (and apparently emotionally) demanding dance routine culminated with him falling to his knees in tears during the redemption chorus of “Man in the Mirror,” then rising triumphantly, throwing his hands to the heavens, a changed man. Tasteless though it may have been to exploit a deceased legend for his own P.R. campaign, it was a powerful performance, and far more effective than Brown's graceless verbal apologies. That may be because it wasn't really an apology. The performance left unclear whether Brown was weeping over the pain he'd caused or the pain he'd endured.
Shortly after his BET image rehabilitation, “Deuces,” a slow-burning single from Brown's Fan of a Fan mixtape, began its long climb up the charts. It was followed shortly after by a remix featuring Drake, Kanye West and Andre 3000three artists who almost certainly wouldn't have staked their images on a Chris Brown track in the immediate aftermath of the Rihanna incident. The remix made it official: Brown was no longer toxic.
Today, the singer is well out of the danger zone, enjoying three simultaneously charting singles: the harmless pop crossover “Yeah 3x,” the Diplo-produced “Look at Me Now” and the sex jam “No Bullshit.” That last track may be Brown's best yet. Explicit yet convincingly sweet, devoid of gimmicks and catchphrases, it's the most grown-up track he's ever recorded, and an indication that, like Usher, he'll be able to parlay teen stardom into adult success.
It was never a given that Brown would salvage his career. He scratched and clawed his way back onto radio, frequently stumbling. Now that he's back, though, I feel foolish that I wasted so much mental energy rooting against himin part because it was futile, obviously, but mostly because it was hypocritical. Great singers from James Brown to Rick James have been accused of far more vile misdeeds than Chris Brown, but my opinions of their music aren't at all shaped by their behavior. It's only fair to hold Brown to that same standard. Hating somebody as a person doesn't morally obligate you to hate him as a musician.
