Thursday, August 21, 2008

You Just A Baby Boy



I have to discuss an issue that randomly concerns me this afternoon. Chris Brown. Who does this guy think he is? If you want me to be perfectly honest I was not really paying attention to anything he was doing until that song 'Poppin' got a remix with Juelz Santana (Ay!) and Lil Wayne a few summers ago. It was too funny not to enjoy, oh what with lines like "I'm about my dough and cheese just call me a slice of pizza (Ay!)/ I'll be your pizza guy/ deliver your pizza pie(Ay!)" There was fun to be had for all. Chris Brown to me represented the crop of popular entertainers that were actually younger than me. More specifically sex symbols that were younger than me. Chris Breezy never really did it for me in my panty area like how he seems to do it for these young girls. In fact, I actually did have one dream about him *smoke and glitter fade in* It involved myself and my then boyfriend (who actually secretly digs CB despite allegedly being from the block or something) and Chris all on an outing to the movies. Breezy ruined the movie by laughing and talking and eating popcorn with his mouth open, and all around being immature. We wondered who invited him - End Scene.
But something about him always piqued my curiosity. He reminded me of one of those kids that was cute but not as popular in high school as you would think he should be. He never dated any of the girls that liked him because he was too busy going down on his mom's friends. That's his back story as far as I'm concerned. So I passed on whatever his first album was called but I did decide to pick up Exclusive. And blimey, it was not half bad. It had a lot of catchy production and it played to his strengths. His voice at best sounds like amateur night at the Apollo. So he largely stayed away from ballads. Even 'With You' the only song on the album that could be mistaken for a ballad is saved by its midtempo beat. 'Take You Down' is the other ballad and I love the throwback to the nasty R&B era of days long past. To me that song captures the intensity and perverted anxiety of your pubescent hormones and your heartbeat during your first time (or at least how you imagine it) and again the fact that its this young bwoy singin it fits and takes you there (or back). And on what I can only assume is Chris Brown's lazy attempt at a stripper love track 'Gimme What You Got', Weezy drops by again to say "let's get high and make love on Venus." Maybe its trite but I like it. I like it when Wayne talks about sex, love , and drugs. These are the topics for which I'll allow he has some authority. In any case my point was that EXclusive was a solid album for what it was however apparently it didn't do so well.


So now, whenever Chris gets a moment to tear himself away from Rihanna's asshole (I'm not hatin, I'm just sayin'), he has been popping up on confusing collabo's and making techno like tracks that I guess are supposed to give him more 'crossover ' appeal (in my opinion heavy metal needs more crossover help than pop r&b these days, but whatev's). On Exclusive's re-release theres the song 'Forever' that has been getting airplay inexplicably. I mean I am not opposed to the disco/club music revival that has been going on lately but I only like it when it's done in a way that is...oh i don't know, sonically appealing? For instance, Ne-Yo's 'Closer' in my opinion hits the right pace, Ne-Yo has always been into these kind of beat patterns and his zesty persona melds with this white nightclub beat in a way I can get into. However in my opinion Rihanna's 'Disturbia' is pretty terrible. Maybe it isn't if you're some kind of glowstick kid and automatically like this kind of music but to me it doesn't hit the mark. I'm not really mad at Rihanna for this though, just because she has been fortunate enough to be a weird artist that can do weird things with her weird voice and get away with it. Chris' 'Forever' however, just seems forced...and a lot like an ad for Doublemint Gum, I mean, did he get a check for that line, cause it didn't even make sense, its just thrown in there. Now he is on some songs with artist Dre and one of them is called 'Hologram' and its pretty bad. The "boom boom chika boom boom" line is repeated over a boring crunchy synth while Dre and Chris talk about God knows what. Basically I am trying to say I don't want to see Chris Brown anywhere he's not supposed to be. Singing while Lil Wayne raps - sure why not (they basically the same age, mentally). Talkin about toasting gangstas with Nas - I don't think so (although I think Nas bodied himself on that track without Chris' help, smh). Nickelodeon Choice Awards- certainly. Anymore of this techno garbage - No more for me please. I'm sorry your last album didn't do so well, but thats because 'Wall to Wall' was a stupid song and you put it out as your lead single. That was the first mistake. There's good shit on that album that no one really got to hear. So instead of jumping on an 'A Milli' freestyle or trying to surf this disco/techno wave you should be doing something that sounds good. And unfortunately, Rihanna doesn't count, kiddo.

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