Chicago Tribune:

Rating: 1 star (out of 4)

Two weeks ago, Rihanna delivered a brilliant album, “Rated R,” that doubled as a thinly veiled, emotionally turbulent reflection on her ill-fated romance with Chris Brown.
Now it’s Brown’s turn.

The 20-year-old singer’s third album, “Graffiti” (Jive), arrives only months after he pleaded guilty to assaulting Rihanna and was sentenced to five years probation, one year of counseling and six months of community service.

Like Rihanna, Brown aims to expand his music beyond hip-hop-flavored R&B by embracing Euro-disco, Goth-rock and new wave. And like Rihanna, he addresses their relationship. But whereas his ex-girlfriend used her album to express her hurt and anger, an outpouring of emotional truth rather than a he-said, she-said public-relations manifesto, Brown turns “Graffiti” into a curious mix of self-pity and accusation when he isn’t simply partying as if he’s already moved on.

The inconsistent and sometimes contradictory tone of Brown’s album suggests he jumped back too soon after committing a serious crime and bearing the brunt of a public-relations nightmare. He and his handlers should have known that every move he makes will be judged against his real-life actions, and anything he says – short of a contrite apology – will be viewed with extreme skepticism. He would’ve been better off to stay silent, or to avoid the topic altogether on an album that includes several top-notch pieces of innocuous dance music.

Once a coltish boy-next-door who made mildly suggestive R&B for teens and young adults, Brown is trying to refashion his image as a cutting-edge artist – or as cutting edge as a guy who has already sold millions of albums can get. He had a hand in writing 12 of the 13 tracks on “Graffiti,” and hunted for beats that value atmosphere as much as propulsion. Brown has referenced Michael Jackson and Prince as influences on his new work, but his sound also borrows from the cross-genre experiments of Kanye West, Saul Williams and Lil Wayne.

He poses on the cover like a futuristic rocker with a can of spray paint in one robotic hand and a guitar in the other, though the music isn’t nearly as radical as that image implies. Yet several tracks strike a more aggressive stance, a teen artist growing into manhood, and no doubt will sound fantastic on a dancefloor with a booming speaker system. “I Can Transform Ya” stirs up an android racket with synthesizers and guitars. Brown adopts a clipped hip-hop cadence to match a cameo by Lil Wayne. The club bangers keep coming: “I.Y.A.” channels ‘80s synth-rock, “Pass Out” spins the disco mirror ball, “Wait” flexes hip-hop muscle, and “What I Do” has got nothing more on its mind than a block-busting beat and “the cars, the gals and the cribs.”

If only Brown had stuck to such carefree fodder, he might’ve at least skated by without further tarnishing his reputation. But he’s not about to stay silent. Three months ago, he appeared on CNN’s “Larry King Live” to explain his actions in the Rihanna affair, and he recently mounted a club tour to reconnect with his fans.
The public rehabilitation campaign might be easier to swallow if Brown weren’t trying to sell his latest album on the back of it. But he is, and now that album must be heard in the context of a celebrity asking something of his fans – but what, exactly? Forgiveness? Forgetfulness? Pity? A fresh start? Or perhaps just a deeper understanding of the complex human being that is Chris Brown?

If that’s the strategy behind “Graffiti,” let the backlash begin. A couple of songs flirt with a public apology. Funeral organ hovers over “Crawl” while the narrator longs for a second chance: “So where do we go from here/With all of this fear in your eyes?” That’s as close as we get to Brown empathizing with his ex-girfriend. On “So Cold,” he asks, “Can you forgive me?” Yet the song isn’t about his partner. The focus shifts to the narrator and his loneliness since the break-up.

The self-pity is even more egregious in the melancholy “Lucky Me” and the morose “Fallin’ Down.” In both songs, the world is collapsing on his shoulders, and a breakdown is imminent. He asks listeners to feel sorry for a celebrity who must bear their constant scrutiny. “Why is it so easy for you to blame/I’m only human, we’re all the same,” he sings, the victimizer turning himself into a victim.

The transformation is made complete on “Famous Girl,” in which Brown names names and suggests that Rihanna precipitated their break-up by cheating on him. “I don’t wear no halo/You were the first to play the game though,” he sings. “Should’ve known you’d break my heart.”

True or not, the song backfires. Instead of providing a plausible explanation for Brown’s reprehensible actions, the lyrics come off as a lowly attempt to justify the couple’s break-up. The song throws the album off balance, and makes every note feel exploitive and self-serving. In trying to restore his reputation, Brown ends up damaging it even more.

Chicago Sun-Times:

Sometimes, great art is made by reprehensible human beings–or at least by people who’ve done reprehensible things. This is a dilemma every critic faces at some point: Can you separate the art from the artist and his misdeeds? And should you?

For this critic, a key factor is whether the artist is attempting to make art from the acts for which he’s been vilified. If the artist is talking about them, it’s beholden upon the critic to address them, too. So Chris Brown is the only one to blame for reviews of his third studio album noting that he pleaded guilty last August to felony assault of his former girlfriend Rihanna–a crime for which he was sentenced to five years’ probation, six months of community labor and a year of domestic violence counseling.

Before that now-infamous incident, Brown was the hottest rising star in R&B, splitting the difference between the musical approaches of Usher and R. Kelly, and exuding a vulnerable sweetness that made him seem huggable even during his lustiest moments. Setting aside the recent scandal for a moment, “Graffiti” is a troublesome effort solely on its musical merits: Attempting to expand his reach beyond the core R&B fan base, Brown and a top-dollar team of producers including Swizz Beatz and Polow Da Don veer wildly from the singer’s strengths to dabble in half-hearted, contrived and autotune-drenched experiments with mechanical dancehall (”I Can Transform Ya”), electronic dance-pop (”So Cold,” “I.Y.A.”) and overwrought, Muse-style pomp-rock (”I’ll Go”).

But there are even bigger problems with the lyrics.

Self-serving references to the “difficulties” the 20-year-old singer has endured since the much-publicized end of his relationship with Rihanna flit through several tracks on “Graffiti.” But the key song is “Famous Girl,” which claims a prominent position right in the middle of the 13-track disc, and which should become infamous as one of the most offensive excuses for domestic violence ever recorded.

The song argues that Rihanna is famous for breaking hearts and that she cheated on Brown, even as the singer proudly boasts that he’s a heartbreaker, too, and that he cheated on her as well. “I thought I found the right woman/There were other guys who thought the same thing/Like them, you let me down,” Brown sings to his ex. “Sorry I bust[ed] the windows out [of] your car/I might have cheated in the beginning/I was wrong for writing ‘Disturbia.’” (Brown was credited as a co-writer of that Rihanna hit.)

When this is the best that Brown can do to explain his actions, it’s harder than ever to understand or forgive them–or listen to the other themes that dominate the album, that we should all admire him because he’s so darn rich and so darn sexy. If Rihanna’s new disc “Rated R” displayed deep reservoirs previously untapped in her earlier discs, “Graffiti” shows a shallow and soulless Brown well hidden until now.

Sometimes, great art is made by reprehensible human beings, and squaring the two is enormously difficult. Thankfully, that problem isn’t nearly as thorny when reprehensible human beings make art that is thoroughly mediocre and at times just garbage.

The New York Times:

There it is, reasonably well hidden, 3 minutes 38 seconds into “Lucky Me,” the 11th of 13 tracks on “Graffiti,” the third album by Chris Brown: the moment of contrition. Up through that point he tried out some other strategies for publicly facing his tarnished reputation following his assault of Rihanna, then his girlfriend, in February. There’s evasion, masked indignation and, in a couple of places, pleading.

“Lucky Me” initially appears to be the most disingenuous of the songs here, trying to evoke pity for a life lived in the limelight — “I’ve gotta pose for the cameras/Even when my world’s falling down/I still wear a smile.” But then, just as the song is shaking off its light sarcasm and its digitized Ladysmith Black Mambazo-esque chorus, for two bars Mr. Brown slips into a melody lifted from Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror,” then drops it just as quickly.

As a performer Jackson has long been the guidepost for Mr. Brown, as fluid a dancer as singer. (More so, really.) But this tiny borrowing, from a signature Jackson song about reckoning, resonates louder than almost everything else on “Graffiti,” a curiously faceless album that largely thumbs its nose at close reading.

Two songs near the beginning, “So Cold” and “Crawl,” come off as thoughtful, even if they’re not quite mea culpas. In these moments Mr. Brown is pining, mildly apologetic. And “Famous Girl,” a sprightly Ryan Leslie production, seethes credibly, with Mr. Brown seemingly tossing accusations and barbs in his ex’s direction, though all its internal references to other R&B singers and songs only make Mr. Brown appear willfully emotionally distant.

But mostly he’s moved back to the angular seduction numbers he’s made his specialty. “I Can Transform Ya” is an electric, brassy collaboration with Lil Wayne. “Take My Time,” featuring the underappreciated R&B singer Tank, churns like vintage Jodeci, with achingly slow drums, heavy female breathing and little room for innuendo. And “Wait,” with the more blatantly sensual R&B singer Trey Songz and the rapper the Game, comes the closest to capturing the frenetic energy of Mr. Brown’s early singles. (It’s tough to tell which singer promises his lover he’ll “beat it like a boxer,” but it’s safe to say that lyric shouldn’t be within 500 yards of Mr. Brown.)

In an interview with “20/20” on Friday Mr. Brown said a song, “Changed Man,” that he’d written for Rihanna a few weeks after the assault had brought her to tears when he played it for her. “I remember your touch/God, I miss you so much,” he sings on it. “Please believe me, baby, I’m sorry.” But while that song has been available on the Internet for months, it’s not on this album: too literal, perhaps, for a singer still in hiding. JON CARAMANICA

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