CHRIS BROWN

That's because he can be seen as being persecuted, and the mothering instict kicks in for these 15-25 year olds. xp

the fact that he still has an army of loyal, hysterical teenage girl fans just makes me so uncomfortable. wtf are they thinking?

basically i want, like, a really strong adult feminist to sit down with each of these girls and give them some #realtalk

and i still love brown's heavily produced goofy club songs when he does them right; there's just been a dearth of them lately.

aretha franklin's #realtalk, sundays at nine pm EST on OWN

I'm not denying that there isn't a significant financial motivator behind promoting him, but there are a whole host of external factors/pressures on "the black community" at large that causes sheltering even the most obviously despicable person, usually coming from the twin impulses of "the rest of the world is beating this person down, someone needs to offer support" and "divided we are easier to conquer" that you really can't ignore.

Although conversely Justin Timberlake exposed a woman on live national television and somehow everyone managed to blame her, so it is certainly more complicated than just "it's race, stupid"; just don't sleep on how large a factor that actually is.

it's race then gender then class stupid, except when it's in the opposite order.

Yeah, I still can't figure out how Janet's the one who takes the sole blame for that one. xp

xp see i dunno about that because there's a lot of easily disposable figures who are arguably or inarguably more talented than brown but just haven't had the staying power or are as likely to be hotly contested as "indispensible".... dude gets more BET love than say Lloyd or even Ne-Yo really

― I just want to give a shout-out to Buzzy Beetles (forksclovetofu), Wednesday, March 23, 2011 11:45 AM (52 seconds ago) Bookmark

Ne-Yo's fanbase is older and broader (i.e. less breathlessly loyal tweens), Lloyd was never as big a star. CB's first two albums were massive, like the teenybopper equivalent of Usher's Confessions.

i'm trying to think of a black female celebrity who's been similarly disgraced - do remy ma and lil kim still have the support of the black community in the main? not the best parallels i admit

That's because he can be seen as being persecuted, and the mothering instict kicks in for these 15-25 year olds.

^^^this is so OTFM. befuddled that people - particularly pop radio fans - don't get this. the narrative is everything. Chris Brown's beating Rihanna makes him MORE marketable, because it makes him controversial. duh.

Yeah, I still can't figure out how Janet's the one who takes the sole blame for that one. xp

it's so weird to me that any "blame" or furore came out of that total non-incident

you could argue that no one ever actually cared about Remy Ma

I don't know how well Lil Kim's next album would do but I think the only people who out-and-out despise her are uncritical Nicki Minaj stans.

Chris Brown's beating Rihanna makes him MORE marketable, because it makes him controversial.

i would totally get this if he had a certain image to start with - but he was seen as such a goody-two-shoes type, beating rihanna should have completely ruptured that. and he hasn't really been going for a particularly bad-boy image on record since.

you could argue that no one ever actually cared about Remy Ma

;_;

well usher proved easily disposable for awhile! i know you're looking for an apple for apple comparison, but I dunno if it's that straightforward even. I remember speaking with some big promoters and radio people right around the time this story first broke and they were adamant that the kid was finished, they were boycotting his music, he wasn't going to get bookings yadda yadda.
Somebody or several somebodys in the industry had to have stepped up and said that they weren't gonna give up on him; this is not a grass-roots led revival.

disgraced black female celebrity that comes to mind is lil kim maybe? more because of the surgeries than anything else tho

i would totally get this if he had a certain image to start with - but he was seen as such a goody-two-shoes type, beating rihanna should have completely ruptured that. and he hasn't really been going for a particularly bad-boy image on record since.

― lex pretend, Wednesday, March 23, 2011 11:54 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

his 2 latest big radio hits were a straight up rap song and a curse-filled sexy slow jam called "No Bullshit"

also lil kim was never exactly respectable in the first place - from the surgeries to the jail time, all of her "disgrace" was pretty much in character - no one who ever liked her in the first place could have been put off that much by them

why are we even talking about rappers who committed crimes against non-famous people, it's always gonna be total apples/oranges

well usher proved easily disposable for awhile! i know you're looking for an apple for apple comparison, but I dunno if it's that straightforward even. I remember speaking with some big promoters and radio people right around the time this story first broke and they were adamant that the kid was finished, they were boycotting his music, he wasn't going to get bookings yadda yadda.
Somebody or several somebodys in the industry had to have stepped up and said that they weren't gonna give up on him; this is not a grass-roots led revival.

― I just want to give a shout-out to Buzzy Beetles (forksclovetofu), Wednesday, March 23, 2011 11:55 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

i hate to sound impressed by Team Breezy or anything, but "Deuces" became a #1 R&B hit off a mixtape with afaict no real major label support. his fans are psychotic and stupid but their movement is pretty grassroots.

also you guys have to remember that god really loves chris brown so that probably has something to do w/ his songs being super popular again

yeah the beating brought several factors together to guarantee his logevity - 1) the trainwreck/controversy angle, guaranteeing that he would get headlines no matter what he did 2) the "circle the wagons" reflex of the black community, 3) the "persecution complex" of his teengirl fanbase, which eats this "you just don't UNDERSTAND!"-type of shit up with a spoon.

this all seems really blatantly obvious and predictable to me.

yeah he basically just transitioned from being the cute member of a boy band to 'the dangerous, troubled one' with the tattoos and weird hair

I get the protectionist instict from his young female fans—it's biological—but the way Rihanna got painted as having brought it on herself by some people made my stomach turn.

totally

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqwKhim7K-Q

I think another angle that contributed to this Chris Brown fiasco is black nationalism. When the Chris Brown/Rihanna fiasco came out, I heard and saw a lot of anti-Caribbean talk coming out of a lot of black American's mouths. Chris Brown is seen as "one of us" meaning he is a good ole southern black boy who is misunderstood and trying to do right. Even though in his music and public appearances that $#%^ hasn't shown any humility at all.

Rihanna is the exotic, Caribbean girl who "has to be unstable because all Caribbean girls are" so black Americans just can not believe she is totally innocent. Since she is "not one of us" she has to be evil and deceiving.

Also side note:

Yeah, I still can't figure out how Janet's the one who takes the sole blame for that one.

If somebody (and I basically mean the USA) thinks the concept of "blame" had to be inserted in that Janet/Justin incident, then it basically shows we are afraid/hate black women's bodies as a whole. It was just a fucking breast.

dunno if i'd ever even considered that level of xenophobia playing into this ugliness, not sure how much I can take that to heart but i'm in the sovereign country of NYC where the pot melts a bit more than elsewhere so

I get the protectionist instict from his young female fans—it's biological—...

How is this biological? My sister stop being a fan when the incident happened. So not all black women are predisposed to defend black men when they do wrong.

dunno if i'd ever even considered that level of xenophobia playing into this ugliness, not sure how much I can take that to heart but i'm in the sovereign country of NYC where the pot melts a bit more than elsewhere so

NYC doesn't equal the world

i think you read race into the "biological" comment that wasn't actually there

I'd be fine with breasts of all colors on network tv on a regular basis, but the morality police find it sinful and titillating (pun intended).

What would the story have been like if Justin had just walked up to her backstage or out at a restaurant and ripped her top off? He'd take all the blame (and probably go to jail), but since it was her setpiece at the Super Bowl and had the appearance of being a choreographed stunt, she becomes the villain. (I still don't know what was supposed to happen as opposed to what actually happened, but why the hell was Justin grabbing at her boob anyway?)

Ok not all women defend men when they do wrong. Happy now.

"NYC doesn't equal the world"
yah, that was exactly my point

The mothering instict I spoke of earlier was clearly a generality. Does not apply in all situations to all women.

xpost Well I'm just highlighting the fact that NYC is an exception when it comes to black ethnicities co-mingling. In a lot of other areas, prejudice and stereotypes are more prevalent.

(I still don't know what was supposed to happen as opposed to what actually happened, but why the hell was Justin grabbing at her boob anyway?)

he was supposed to sing "gonna have you naked by the end of this song" and then remove a tear-away section of her custom-made outfit, is what was supposed to happen

The mothering instict I spoke of earlier was clearly a generality. Does not apply in all situations to all women.

― Johnny Fever, Wednesday, March 23, 2011 9:30 AM (52 seconds ago) Bookmark

I don't believe there is such thing as a "mothering instinct." I think it's more of a environmental thing if anything. If a woman is around an environment where being a mother is a prime role in society then she would be "mothering." If she is not, she probably wouldn't have that "instinct" for a male.

lilsoul: yah, that's my point! I'm saying that I don't necessarily buy that argument but i'm conceding that my environment likely plays a role in that perception.

I don't believe there is such thing as a "mothering instinct."

Well, that's a bad name for it. There's an innate imperative to nurture in most young women, though...which leads to the "I can make him change" mentality which leads to asshole alpha-males exploiting that for as long as they can until women finally wake up after a certain time (most do, some don't).

I hate speaking in generalities, though, because I KNOW this isn't innate behavior in every woman. But it's a significant enough portion of all women to make it notable.

xpost Funny enough I heard this argument from the rapradar founder/former XXL writer from New York City.

tbf, my environment is also a pretty drastically different one from the guy who made rapradar

wait forks isn't yn?

dunno if i'd ever even considered that level of xenophobia playing into this ugliness, not sure how much I can take that to heart but i'm in the sovereign country of NYC where the pot melts a bit more than elsewhere so

have been following baseball at all, because all of this pops up there, including on New York teams

Next up: Dancing with the Stars.

Enjoying @CHRISBROWNHULK on Twitter very much.

dunno if i'd ever even considered that level of xenophobia playing into this ugliness, not sure how much I can take that to heart but i'm in the sovereign country of NYC where the pot melts a bit more than elsewhere so

when i was a junior in hs i worked a summer w/ inner city youth & the black american kids treated the haitian kids really terribly -- kids will be kids etc but i have to imagine that it's a top-down thing

I never encountered it until college; it was really eye-opening/disheartening.

i didn't come to nyc until I was 25 and had been in a pretty much monochrome/hetero/bible belt environment prior, so all that stuff flew over my head no doubt cuz HOLY SHIT THAT GUY IS SMOKING A JOINT IN PUBLIC AND THAT GUY IS KISSING A GUY AND THEY'RE SELLING NUTS IN THE STREETS AND THAT GUY'S DREADS ARE DOWN TO HIS KNEES GOSH THE BUILDINGS SURE AM TALL

were you born in pleasantville