Career Rehab: Three Steps To Salvage Chris Brown's Career

After a career-shifting performance at the BET Awards, is Chris Brown ready for pop glory again?

Last year, I wrote a post offering fallen pop prince Chris Brown advice as to how he could save his damaged career. Of course, he followed none of my advice and proceeded to dig a hole so deep that he might as well be dead in the industry. I mean, he's doing underground mixtapes with Tyga, for heaven's sake.

Now, after a pretty spectacular showing at the BET Awards and public favor beginning to turn his way, let's try this again. Here are three simple steps for Chris Brown to successfully put the past behind him and rehab his image and career.

STEP 1: DON'T MILK BET AWARDS PERFORMANCE
People are already believing that Chris Brown's emotional breakdown during his MJ tribute was a well-played PR ploy to garner sympathy. I would like to believe that he was being earnest, but it would be easy to change my mind, especially if he goes around talking about all the time. While I'm sure the media will be clamoring for a quote about his tears, the smartest thing Chris could do is to remain quiet and allow the performance to speak for itself. Chris has a bad habit of incoherence and talking way too much, and I just know he would put a foot in his mouth. And then, any good feelings he would have garnered would be right out the window. In fact, he'd be hated more for using the memory of Michael Jackson to boost his own popularity. Career suicide that would be.

STEP 2: CONTINUE MATURING (AND USE TWITTER A LITTLE BIT LESS)
If I am right, and Chris was overwhelmed by the prospect of reviving his dying career, then I am also inclined to believe that he is ready to behave like an adult and not a petulant child. The biggest turn-off about post-Rihanna Chris was his whining, sense of entitlement, and overall childishness. Whether he was accusing of retailers of blackballing his CD or blasting bloggers and fellow rappers on Twitter, Chris was acting not like a man who royally screwed up and was remorseful, but a 5-year old who got his toy taken away for being bad. The biggest step to image rehab is proving you can learn from your mistakes and grow. While it's great that he has Team Breezy enabling his crap, it doesn't really mean much when your album is outsold by Susan Boyle. Grow up, prove it, and mainstream music will take you back.

STEP 3: RELEASE A LEGITIMATE ALBUM NEXT YEAR WITH ACTUAL SMASHES
While Graffiti partially flopped because of the Rihanna scandal (seriously, releasing less than a month after hers?), it was also because the music sucked. Honestly, it wasn't good, especially coming after the massive success of Exclusive. He had pop crossover hits like "Forever", "With You", and "Kiss Kiss", as well as urban smashes like "Take You Down". He needed to come a lot harder than fluff like "I Can Transform Ya". The album itself was also terribly inappropriate for the timing; when the world needed maturity from him, we got child's play. He couldn't have possibly gotten away with a song like "Take My Time", right? With his new album, he needs to grow up musically, while still producing a good pop hit. And by grow up, I don't mean sleaze. How about sharing the struggles that he went through on the road to redemption, a la T.I's Paper Trail? Honestly, pop music needs Chris Brown back. Whether he is ready or not is all up to him, and his producers.