Baby-making music for the bedroom and the club

Twenty-one years and 12 albums after his first single, BROWN consciously situates the hitmaker in a long line of R&B’s greats.

“I found peace when I stopped explaining my legacy,” Chris Brown sings over a soulful Metro Boomin beat on “Leave Me Alone”, the opening track of BROWN. Instead, the 37-year-old singer lets the cover art speak for itself: Reclining pensively in a retro suit and fedora, he poses in a gesture to classic album covers from Teddy Pendergrass, Luther Vandross and Michael Jackson’s Thriller.

Twenty-one years and 12 albums after his first single, 2005’s “Run It!”, made him the first male solo artist to have a debut single top the Hot 100 since Montell Jordan a decade before, BROWN consciously situates the hitmaker in a long line of R&B’s greats, if you couldn’t tell from the trailer that styled Brown and friends as ’60s crooners under a marquee promising “A NIGHT OF SOUL: R&B & TIMELESS CLASSICS”.

Of the 27 songs on BROWN’s star-studded tracklist, a handful nod to the nostalgic theme: “Holy Blindfold” gives gospel R&B with a hint of Pure Moods, while “Fallin’” recruits Leon Thomas for a smoky blues number with a music video straight out of Sinners.

The remainder harkens to the sound of R&B from the time of Brown’s debut: baby-making music for the bedroom and the club, laser-focused on the subjects of love and sex.

Among the list of collaborators are luminaries from the genre’s past and present, from Tank on “#BODYGOALS” to Bryson Tiller on the horny but heartfelt “It Depends”, which samples USHER’s 1997 hit “Nice & Slow”. YoungBoy Never Broke Again gets romantic on “Red Rum”, and Sexyy Red and GloRilla add a touch of grit to the Memphis-inspired “Call Your Name”.