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Chris Brown album ‘misogynistic’ and ‘repugnant’ says one reviewer

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Naomi Wilcox
WVoN co-editor

Rapper Chris Brown’s new album Fortune last month shot to the top of the billboard charts, despite shakey reviews.

This week, however, a reviewer in Australian music mag X-Press had one simple message for her readers “Don’t buy this album”.

Critic Chloe Papas described the album as ‘repugnant’ and ‘misogynistic’, words many people would use to describe Chris Brown himself, since he violently abused his then girlfriend Rihanna three years ago.

Papas has no compunction about reminding people of this:

“Regardless of whether Chris Brown has any musical talent (he doesn’t) or whether this album is any good (it isn’t), the man recently brutally assaulted a woman, and is still regularly invited back to award shows and worshipped by ‘Breezy’ fansworldwide.

“Which is, frankly, disgusting. And for those of you saying you need to separate the music and the man; screw you, don’t encourage his actions.”

For those who are willing to give his music a listen, there’s plenty to be found in his lyrics which are cause for concern.

While Papas picks up on the song Till I Die, describing it as ‘a catastrophic, misogynistic shit of a song’, I found that the dark undertones, and clues to Brown’s character aren’t confined to it.

The lyrics to Biggest Fan,  which describes sexual encounters with fans, include the disturbing lines:

“When you scream I need
To pull your body closer, let me sex you baby
Girl you better not change your mind…”,

“…No is not an option”, and later in the song “I’m ‘a take what’s mine”.

The implications of these lines are not hard to miss, and certainly don’t sound like they come from a person who has any respect for women, or who feels he needs their consent before having sex.

Despite Brown’s public apologies, lyrics like these reveal that he’s still scarily off the mark in his attitudes towards women.

Even more disturbing is the fact that the album has had such huge sales, and that a large proportion of Brown’s fanbase are teenage girls, the same girls who caused a Twitter storm when he performed at the Grammys earlier this year.

Countless of these young fans posted tweets which all very much said the same thing -“I’d let Chris Brown beat me up any day”.

You can see a very representative sample of them here. These fans haven’t attempted to separate the man from the music, they have merely embraced the man – and his violent, illeagal actions, along with the music.

Papas’ review is refreshing, as it comes amidst a sea of celebrities who are happy to promote Chris Brown and call for his forgiveness.

It’s depressing that Papas reminds us of Brown’s horrific actions during a week when reports surfaced of Brown and Rihanna rekindling their relationship.

The message that this sends to their young fans about violent relationships is worrying indeed.

  1. vicki wharton says:

    Chris Brown is to women what the KKK is to black people. Toxic and fatal.

  2. Unfortunately there are many “artists” out there with disgusting lyrics like this… And the most perplexing thing is that, increasingly, it’s young women who listen to this horrific bulls**t…

    • vicki wharton says:

      I think its a way of keeping popular and safe with guys and society as a whole – if you protest about the way that men talk about women in hip hop and porn – you instantly align yourself with feminists – and we all know what demon she devils they are who are presented by male rights activists as wanting all men killed, castrated and incarcerated. Its so much easier to demonise the messenger rather than actually deal with the problem, particularly if you’re part of it.

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