Chris Brown is in a Burbank studio previewing his forthcoming album, and pushing the reset button on a career bogged down by scandal. The embattled R&B singer takes a lengthy drag off his cigarette before pressing “play” on the title track of “X,” his sixth disc, due out in late summer.
“You can start a fight, I ain’t fighting back,” he sings on the track. “I swear to God I’m moving on.”
Brown listens quietly as the music plays out, dancing behind the sprawling control console. When it’s over, the singer puts out his cigarette, takes a seat and opens up.
“Basically I’m being honest,” he says. “I’m 23. I hang out with a lot of bad people and a lot of good people. But everything is a learning process. I’m just trying to move forward and learn from every mistake.”
From his felony conviction over a 2009 assault against girlfriend Rihanna and their on again-off again relationship since, frequent Twitter spats and alleged fights with Frank Ocean and Drake, Brown has no shortage of mistakes to learn from.
But Brown still has fans. He won his first Grammy last year for his comeback record, “F.A.M.E.,” and his last effort, 2012’s “Fortune,” reached No. 1 and sold 135,000 copies in its first week.
While recording “X,” Brown was aware that he was up against a reputation he, in part, helped create.
“There was so much …. that was going on in my life. Fights and other stuff going on in the media. I got to the point where I didn’t even want to leave the studio,” he says, his tattoos and the serious topic making him seem older than his age. “It’s like I don’t even want to go out and be seen. I don’t want a new story to come out.”
Brown knows people are watching, listening and waiting to judge.
“For this album you get a chance to take a journey with me and listen to every dynamic of who I am, whether it be the subject matter or the substance in the records,” Brown says. “I’ve been doing this for eight years, but now it’s me trying to prove another point. It’s not as much as me wanting to prove to naysayers, it’s more of me proving to my fans.”
