Like most things about the suited, bespectacled image of Chris Brown that stares intensely at something to his right from his new album’s cool blue artwork (currently: the remains of the delicious spicy chicken pizza I had for dinner), the title Fortune is not an accident. For Brown has, as anybody who hasn’t been living under some pop culture rock these past three years, been a very fortunate lad. Although technically still on probation for the brutal assault of his then-girlfriend Rihanna in 2009, such is the esteem with which this man is held by his contemporaries in American pop that he was controversially invited to perform at this year’s Grammy Awards, at which he was also presented with a Best Album gong for his “comeback” album, F.A.M.E..
Of course, the more cynical among us might point out that Fortune pairs nicely with F.A.M.E. in another sense too, and could just be a reference to the thousands of sales that Brown is about to rake in from a devoted underage following that styles itself “Team Breezy”.
On Fortune, Chris Brown is anxious to style himself as a lover, not a fighter. Like, really anxious - a good 80 per cent of the album’s 14 tracks detail his prowess as such in enough detail to make your mother blush. He’s got a Magnum in his wallet which he is not afraid to use, he sings, which for the more innocent British readers is not a half-melted ice cream but rather a popular American brand of prophylactic. Throughout the album he beds any number of ladies, none of whom express any particular concerns about the artist’s violent tendencies towards women even in the face of vaguely threatening come-ons like "Girl, you better not change your mind" and silver-tongued wordsmithery like “wanna see your legs in the air, baby don’t worry about your hair”.
Fans may cry vendetta against reviewers who insist on bringing up Brown’s old (if unexpired) crimes, which is why it’s a relief that Fortune is a genuinely bad album. It's full of clumsily-disguised references to the singer’s penis and one track that describes in such excruciating detail how he intends to celebrate if the Mayans were right about the end of the world that I had to skip forward. It’s like Tom Haverford and Jean-Ralphio from Parks and Recreation performing a parody of the worst Nineties R&B, an analogy I’m so proud of I’m going to include a clip from the show below instead of a video of Brown’s.
You’ll get the idea.
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