Serious Question: Which Chris Brown Song Is Braggiest About His Sex Life?
Chris Brown, we can all agree, is an icky person. That’s a childish phrase we’re using for very adult reasons, but that is nonetheless the feeling he inspires as a musician and human being. He’s icky. He did some icky things. Let that stand and be out there and part of this discussion.
Chris Brown has also made a lot of icky music, which is to say, Chris Brown’s music is super sexually graphic, often beyond the boundaries of what we’ve normalized in 2017, which is especially nuts considering Chris Brown’s heyday came 10 years ago.
The mid-00s were certainly a promiscuous time (Those middle school dances, amiright? Kidding! Kidding. Wow relax, Mom), but the period still predates the Fifty Shades of Grey soundtracks, the Weeknd’s dark-synth songs about adulterous consequences, and Rihanna going all-in on her carnal expressions. Sexuality in music had to be Trojan-horsed into a song via bouncy pop grooves, beachy summer vibes, and choruses that asked you to shout various Woah-oh-ohs and Yeah-yeah-yeahs. We were a long way off from songs like Rihanna’s “S&M,” Ariana Grande’s “Side to Side,” and Selena Gomez’s “Good For You.”
Chris Brown, though, was a master at sneaking sex into his songs, which is both to his credit but also uncomfortable to point out, if you follow that. His music is full of conquests and escapades and all manner of ridiculous, over-the-top, self-aggrandizing sexual situations. It’s interesting tohear them now and think about the kind of supernova-heat-level star Chris Brown was in his teens and early 20s. Which, by the way, is another key point: Chris Brown is 28 right now. That is ridiculous.
Anyway, for this Serious Question, we’re going to turn back the clock and examine Chris Brown’s former stardom through the lens of his most sexually-graphic songs. After that, we’re going to talk about the patterns we see and then tie all that into a broader conversation that is almost certainly beyond my reach. Come on, it’ll be fun!
Which Chris Brown Song Is Braggiest About His Sex Life?
“Run It” (2005)
Braggy Sexual Lyric: “You’ll see, girl I can set you off, don’t believe my age is gonna slow us down/I can definitely show you things to have you saying I can’t be 16.”
Few things to clear out before we talk about “Run It.” 1) This song is so effing good. It’s better than you remember it being. 2) The 16-year-old sex brags disguised as dance brags are super, super uncomfortable. 3) Juelz Santana features on this one, and he has the most sexual brags (“We can get it in, we can get some friends, do it like the Ying Yang twins”). 4) This song is literally just Usher’s “Yeah!” but a little grimier and a little less legit.
But let’s assume that all the dance brags here are actually sex brags (they are). This song becomes essentially a minor insisting that an adult have sex with him, which is all kinds of nasty. At the time, this song was fun and wow and we all just kind of wanted to look over the weird age stuff that was going on in it because we thought Chris Brown was amazing and talented and had an undeniable charisma. But now, yeesh.
Sexual Acts Referenced: 12
Main Sexual Idea: Chris can coerce women into consensual illegal acts.
How Braggy Is It?: 7/10 on the Brag-Meter
“Kiss Kiss” (2007)
Braggy Sexual Lyric: “In her mind she fantasize ‘bout getting with me/They hating on me, hating on me, they wanna diss diss, kiss kiss/Because she mine and so fine, thick as can be”
Tricky one to dissect, this. There are lots of money brags, which is par for the course, but the sex brags here are less about 18-year-old Chris’ sexual prowess and more about how fine those women are who he’s bedding. In fact, there’s one lyric that even seems to allude to Chris having a tiny penis (“You feeling me, so why is you hating on my anatomy? It’s bird-like, yeah, you heard right.”). On the other hand, the pre-chorus features Chris “pimping in my donk” which means he’s in a parking lot trying to pick up girls out of his car. Want to know what kind of girls come up to a guy’s car and agree to be picked up? It’s a tough look. Basically, this song features bird-penis Chris Brown paying for sex. Not very braggy.
Sexual Acts Referenced: 3
Main Sexual Idea: Chris has a penis that, like a bird, is either brittle, thin, or light in weight.
How Braggy: 2/10
“Forever” (2008)
Braggy Sexual Lyric: “It’s you and me, moving at the speed of light into eternity, yeah/Tonight is the night to join me in the middle of ecstasy.”
Man, remember when Chris Brown wasn’t, like, a felon? “Forever” came out in 2008, which means Chris was 18 (again, wha) at the time of its release. Now destined to be “that one song we thought about asking that other person to dance to in middle school but then chickened out in the middle of,” “Forever” still bangs, but it also stands as a rather innocent and rather lovely track in the midst of a library that is, as we’ll continue to see, quite explicit otherwise. This song doesn’t really have an overt allusion to sex (though there are a couple things you could interpret that way: “Imma take you there,” mainly). But, at its heart, this is really a tender pop song about dancing with someone you feel excited about. It’s sweet. Too bad Chris soured it.
Sexual Acts Referenced: 4 (maybe)
Main Sexual Idea: Chris’ dance moves are good enough to lead to sex.
How Braggy: 3/10
“Take My Time” (2009)
Braggy Sexual Lyric: “I want to lay you down, just stay naked, now I’m staring for an hour babe”
This song is about Chris ambushing a woman after she emerges from the shower and, before she can make herself modest, he initiates sex. Gotta be ready for that in Chris Brown’s house, I suppose. As far as sex brags go, this one feels a bit sincerer considering only one woman is involved. There’s also a relieving lack of sexual specifics. Still, though, it’s a far-fetched thesis by Chris. I can’t imagine any woman who, upon exiting the shower, would enjoy being surprised by a man before she can dry her hair, apply deodorant, or perhaps clean her ears with a q-tip (I don’t really know how feminine hygiene works). So on that premise alone, it’s quite braggy indeed for Chris to say he can execute such a maneuver.
Sexual Acts Referenced: 5 (on one woman!)
Main Sexual Idea: Chris can overcome seemingly insurmountable sexual obstacles.
How Braggy: 6/10
“Wet the Bed” (2011)
Braggy Sexual Lyric: Where to begin, really.
Let’s just say this song isn’t about an embarrassing thing that happened to Chris Brown at summer camp. Some choice lines: “Baby you’re just a storm raining on me girl/You’re soaking wet, whoa” and then “Bend you back like it’s limbo, Imma make you feel like a nympho.” It feels like a key time to mention this song is post-Rihanna.
Things a woman is compared to in this song: An ocean, a drink (“sipping on your body”), the sea, a storm, the rain, and a game of limbo. Then Ludacris comes in and adds Sammy Sosa, a super soaker, someone having an asthma attack, a back-breaker, and a cloudy forecast. Ludacris is an amazing songwriter.
Sex Acts Referenced: A lifetime’s worth, to be frank.
Main Sexual Idea: Chris is good at, uh, orally navigating vaginas?
How Braggy: 9/10
“Ayo” feat. Tyga (2015)
raggy Sexual lyric: “We loving, she love it/Especially when I go down on her/Now we fucking, she thugging/Getting loud, cause we poppin’ like ayo!”
Sexual lyric that’s grossest to decipher: “If I motorboat, she gon’ motorbike.”
This song comes from the Chris Brown/Tyga collaboration album Fan of a Fan 2. In terms of sexual bragging, adding Tyga to your song is like snagging a power-up in a video game: It’s just gonna send your sex-bragging score through the GD roof. Tyga loves bragging about sex. He says things like “Valentine in that pussy/It’s a holiday” which is a terrible, presumptuous, kinda gross thing to say about that part of a woman’s body. Chris Brown on this song is like the stripper that shows up to the bachelorette party, and Tyga is the guy who comes out of the cake.
Sexual Acts Referenced: 11
Main Sexual Idea: If Chris were in a three-way sexual situation, he would excel, especially if Tyga was also in the mix.
How Braggy: 8/10
Some observations:
- When you listen to a lot of Chris Brown in a row, it becomes obvious that he’s more or less a poor man’s Usher. He’s like if Usher wasn’t as mature, or like if Justin Timberlake wasn’t as artistic. A few of these songs are bangers, but that’s pretty much all you expect from Chris Brown. Sex ballads or more R&B-style grooves don’t vibe as well.
- Chris’ sexual bragging is pretty varied, as varied as it can be within music, really. He brags about being able to seduce a woman, then please a woman, then please multiple women, then experiment with multiple women, then incorporate his rapper friends, like Tyga and Ludacris, into his exploits without making the woman feel uncomfortable (truly, the most unlikely brag here).
- It’s interesting that Chris positioned himself as a sexual artist from the moment he hit the scene. Even as a teenager, he was bragging about how good he was at sex, and when that didn’t make people uncomfortable (“Run It” spent five weeks at No. 1 on Billboard), he leaned all the way into it. True, his biggest hits haven’t really been about sex, but they also haven’t excluded sex entirely. It’s a curious path for a young artist, who in concept typically start out innocent before breaking bad at some point in their 20s (Miley, Selena, Demi, Bieber, and, though she’s late to the game, Taylor Swift).
- As his career has progressed, it seems Chris has become more sexually overt and more sexually graphic in his music, which is puzzling if not exactly surprising. It feels like Chris started in a place where he was going to sell himself as a multi-talented, dance-centric club connoisseur, and then titled slightly toward a sort of scrungey (not a word, but sounds appropriate) crooner. He had a great lane when “Run It” came out, and not staying in that lane proved to backfire after all the Rihanna stuff came to light. We don’t want to listen to someone make advances when we’ve seen his real-life relationships become violent. It’s really that simple.
So our Serious Question actually evolves into several real-life serious questions about young talent, fame, separating art from reality, and sexual politics. Chris Brown has had hits since the Rihanna incident, and truth be told, he’s good for at least one objectively solid dance song per album, but his complications are heightened because the exact area where he seeks to sell himself—allure, romance, love-making—is the precise area where we all know he is 100,000-percent a giant scumbag. The façade feels shameless, like he didn’t expect us to see a disparity.
The whole dynamic makes you feel slimy about Chris Brown’s post-Rihanna music, and guilty about his pre-Rihanna music. Breezy ruined how fun it was to listen to Breezy, because even his inconsequential club anthems are burdened with reality. We like mindless dance songs and pulsing club pop because those songs take us to a place where we can forget the outside world. When we hear Chris Brown, we’re just reminded of it. The sex he brags about might be great, but we know it doesn’t mean anything, so in time, we’re just going to pull away. There’s attraction, but no love.