‘Royalty’ doesn’t wear the crown
CHRIS BROWN Royalty DOWNLOAD Fine By Me, Zero, Blow It in the Wind
Fatherhood seems to suit Chris Brown well.
Lately, the R&B star’s Instagram has become a deluge of endearing daddy/daughter photos. Scroll through his feed and you’ll quickly spot pictures of him and his 1-year-old daughter, Royalty, posing in matching outfits and candid Halloween snaps, and going on smile-filled outings to the zoo and basketball games. Despite his bad rep in the press and his ongoing legal troubles, it looks as if Brown is trying to turn a corner in his personal life and overhaul his image — going so far as to name his seventh album Royalty, complete with a black-and-white portrait of him cradling his daughter as the cover art.
It all suggests a more grown-up direction for the 26-year-old. But unfortunately, putting his daughter front-and-center of his new album campaign is a MacGuffin. On Royalty, thoughtful lyrics go out the window in favor of deceptively catchy songs that are often crass and borderline creepy.
Royalty kicks off with Back to Sleep, a hypnotic hook-up ode to a woman Brown hopes to meet up with while he’s on the road. It’s all pretty harmless R&B fare until the song ’s off-putting chorus, in which he croons, “Just let me rock / (expletive) you back to sleep, girl. / Don’t say a word, no / don’t you talk.” It’s just the beginning of a long track list brimming with uncomfortable and unnecessarily explicit references. On Little Bit, he sings about his anatomy as he beckons a woman with “sex and Hennessy.” Who’s Gonna (Nobody) delivers cringe-worthy metaphor after metaphor, and Make Love is about exactly what its title sug- gests. His insistent pining might have been more excusable had his lyrics been clever, but it comes across as tasteless and uninspired.
That’s not to say the album is a wash. Brown is at his best on playful Fine By Me and Zero, which keep in line with the sparkling ’80s synth-pop that has dominated Top 40 this year.
Blow It in the Wind is a chilled-out middle finger to the haters with a message about forging ahead, while Brown gets in a sweet message to his daughter on the 11 o’clock dance anthem Little More
(Royalty), saying, “Oh, baby girl, you inspire me / give me the reason to keep on / My baby, my Royalty, girl, you’re the lyrics to my song.”
All of these tracks prove that Brown is undeniably talented as a singer with an ear for memorable hooks and vivid production. But as is, Royalty takes the crown as one of the year’s weakest R&B albums.