Chris Brown - Look at Me Now

Fairly important: the formatting on this post goes to hell in most feeds, and it will be best read at ericonthecharts.blogspot.com

Chris Brown tries to show skill, quits after three lines, hands it over to Busta Rhymes.

Chris Brown
Look at Me Now
Bragging
#11 (High)
Feb 10, 2011
None Listed
Diplo

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After plenty of connection and hardware issues, I fire this thing up to...

Damnit! Chris Brown?  Thanks for nothing.

“I say, Miffy. Thadeus' trousers are
of last year's fashion. We shan't be
inviting him to the party.”

Everything that comes from this guy makes me like him less than the last time I dealt with him. Of course, he's not doing himself any favors by opening with “I don't see how you can hate from outside of the club. You can't even get in.” Add a laugh that successfully mixes a thirteen-year-old bully with a hyena and we've established the most smugly infuriating personality this side of Princess from the Powerpuff Girls. I know boasts are traditional in hip hop, but why does it sound like Chris Brown's boasts are mocking the nerdy pledges not cool enough to join his frat?

I suppose we have to give Brown the tiniest bit of credit, because I usually complain about the laziness of his tracks along with his toxic persona. This song, while still excruciatingly awful, is light years from Chris Brown's safe bet, manufactured plastic. Instead of cookie-cutter dance music, the sounds here come from early 60's science fiction worthy of Mystery Science Theater 3000; when the song started, I was immediately transported to a laboratory where a scientist in horn-rimmed glasses was using tape driven computers to combat giant, undersea creatures.

She accidentally fall
trip on my dick
Oops, I said
on my dick
I ain't really mean
to say on my dick
but since we talkin
bout my dick
all you haters
say hi to it.

Similarly, Brown's lazy, pop star singing (autotuned to death) has been replaced with rapping, which also comes off as lazy... until he double-times it. While that does hint at a little ambition (he's trying to do something that requires a skill! Duck!), he can barely pull it off, and after two lines, just ends up repeating the words “on my dick” because he simply can't go that fast. On his dick? On his dick.

Did Jason Mewes write this? Was Silent Bob dancing behind him in the studio for effect?

And then he just gives up and literally says “I'm done,” and lets Busta Rhymes come in and show him how make that trick work. Yup, that's right: this is the audio equivalent of watching a kid fall off his skateboard, followed an older kid taking his board and upstaging him in front of his friends.

I can't say things get measurably better after Brown decides his own song is too much for him.  Sure, Busta Rhymes has a handle on how to do a Brag track without sounding like a moron, thug, or child, but he's bookended by a useless Chris Brown and (here we go again) Lil Wayne, who doesn't seem to have a lot of love for bitches or faggots... which, again, doesn't offend me: I'm not too PC or blushing at someone being inappropriate, I just don't have time for grown men with the collective mental age of a junior high kid.

A junior high kid failing everything but Phys Ed.

RUN!

Stay with the song, walk away, or run like hell: