Album Review: Chris Brown's Graffiti

So, I just finished listening to Chris Brown's new album Graffiti, due out next week, and it is quite unimpressive.

After listening to each track at least twice, here are some basic notes on Brown's post-Rihanna album:

- Anyone looking for Rihanna allusions, you'll be hard-pressed to find them. In fact, "Crawl" notwithstanding, Brown completely ignores the incident.

- That may be a lie, because his song "Famous Girl" seems to be about his pop star ex. It's a song about a girl being "famous" for breaking hearts. He also name-checks a bunch of artists and songs. One of them is Drake (an alleged Rihanna beau). He apologizes to Beyonce for not wearing a "halo", and he even suggests that he should've never written "Disturbia". One could say that they are reading too much into the song, and it very well could've been written before that incident. Then again, it's still in the tracklisting, and it's not like it couldn't have been removed, and I don't think Chris Brown is that stupid. Or maybe he is.

- Besides the first two singles, there are only three single-worthy songs on this album. Besides the second single, there are only two good songs on this album. Everything else is standard R&B fluff filler.

- One of the single-worthy songs (not the good one) is called "So Cold". It sounds like it would be a radio hit, but its really bland and decisively not as good as "Crawl".

- One of the good songs is "Pass Out", featuring Eva Simons. It's the album's "Forever"; an electropop song featuring a sample of Eric Pyrdz's "Call On Me". The only problem is that it's not as fun as "Forever", and it's a hell of a lot creepier. Creepiest lyric: "Can't wait 'til you pass out". The song would be the best song of the album if the sample was used better (they cut out the thumping beat that makes the song a club banger. Big mistake Breezy).

- The other good song is "I.Y.A.". It stands for "in your arms", and it's another electropop song, leaning more on the Pet Shop Boys side of things than you would ever expect. For that reason, it's the second best song on the album (behind "Crawl"). It's a very classy effort, which is curious since...

- ...this album is stunningly immature for someone who just went through a traumatic, career-derailing experience. There is a "Take You Down" knockoff called "Take My Time", which is quite laughable. "Sing Like Me" is an Asian-influenced midtempo that is about he can make a girl "sing" like him (it also features an unfortunate reference of the Spanish word for vagina). "What I Do" sounds like a T-Pain throwaway.

- "Crawl" is the best song on the album.

- While I can appreciate Brown wanting to put the focus back on the music, he had to be a fool thinking he could pull off the same kind of boastful R&B/pop fluff from his past LPs. For a man who had to grow up big time in the past few months, he still sounds like the kid from "Run It" trying to impress the ladies with his swag. It's ironic that his first single is called "I Can Transform Ya", when it's clear he can't even transform himself.

- By the way, Rihanna's album is much better than Chris'.

Rating: 5 out of 10