Chris Brown; The New John Lennon?

I was feeling insecure, you might not love me anymore 
                                                        -Jealous Guy, John Lennon

Artists have both a born gift and ( an often relentless) motivation to create. I'm of the belief that the greatest artists among us are acutely emotionally sensitive and perceptive to life and the world around them.

What, Dean, does any of this self aggrandizing twaddle have to do with your over-inflammatory title to this blog? 

Well, quite simply. I think I'm a hypocrite. You see, even though I look at  artists as talented, often tortured souls, I have trouble setting the same standards to different artists. 

In 2009 R&B sensation Chris brown hit the headlines globally for battering his R&B megastar girlfriend Rihanna. It was so graphic and so public that one would assume his career would be stained and hindered by it (Look at the ongoing reputations of Ike Turner and Sonny Bono, famous for getting off the ground the careers of and severely beating Tina Turner and Cher respectively). Angry young men with short fuses in the public eye have hit women in the past and it's a phenomenon that I fear we haven't seen the last of. I come from a background where my father used to beat my mother, I was too young to remember and grew up in a home without him, however the subject of domestic abuse is something I've always had an ear for. Despite how high emotions have gotten in the past, I've never felt the urge or need to hit any of my sisters, girlfriends or mother. I may still yet prove to be a damaged and angry young man but no-one has felt my wrath as of yet. So what made him do it? Will we ever know? CAN we ever know? Is it really anyones business but Chris and Riahnna's? I'm not sure. But is it right for me to judge his art because of his actions. 

As of now I've never really been into R&B. I was far too white, non-conformist and into Rock music in my mid/late teens to catch the early 2000's wave of R&B artists when the lines really started getting blurry between Hip Hop, R&B and Pop music. However approaching my mid-20's my attitude has softened somewhat. I still have rebellious (?) long hair, plus get me drunk enough when Beyonce's Single Ladies comes on and I'll take you to infinity and beyond. Chris Brown only really enters my conscious brain after the Rihanna incident. Much like the tragic story of Oscar Pistorius, the famous Paralympion who shot dead his wife Reeva Steenkamp earlier this year, a lot of emphasis was put onto how beautiful the victim was. I remember conversations very much in the vein of "If I was hitting that, I wouldn't be ungrateful enough to beat the shit out of her". So the uneducated, less attractive house-wife living in rural-anywheresville being abused by her partener would be less outrageous? No. How beautiful the victim is is of little matter, what we should all be taking from it is how wrong it was.  He was to blame, he was immature and violent. end of. 

Please don't judge me, and I won't judge you. and if you love me, let it be beautiful 
                                                  -Don't Judge Me, Chris Brown

  A flatmate of mine earlier this year kept singing the same line from Chris Brown's "Fine China" as he walked around the living room. I wasn't even sure who the artist was, he would just walk around singing softly under his voice "I'm not dangerous, cos you're mine". Now, anyone that knows me will tell you I'm generally a pussy cat. I'm a big dude who does silly accents. Laid back (dare I say, sometimes funny?). However Living with friends would sometimes bring out the worst in me, I could be a little snappy and overly sarcastic, so when I flipped at his singing I was really out of order and in my inane asshole-ness after finding out it was Chris Brown I laid into my friend about how much of a dick Brown is, also that it's disgusting how he still has such success and such a huge following and fanbase after beating the shit out of his girlfriend. How his fans seem  to gloss over the fact he was a thug. I argued that he didn't deserve the second/third/fourth chances he was being given and certainly didn't deserve to be taken back by Rihanna. Only recently upon a slight mind drift and meditation on that conversation did I see a new context to what I said.

Enter The Beatle. 

I recalled reading or watching something on John Lennon some time ago, I'm quite a fan. Imagine is very near to being an Atheist National anthem. The song "God" slips out of the mouth of any young atheist very easily, it's little more than a list of things John Lennon didn't believe in (literally). But the reason my thought train drifted to this after Chris Brown was that I remember reading that it was rather well known that he had a history of violence toward women. Reports from his first girlfriend, His first wife and even Yoko Ono. The song "Jealous Guy" was supposedly written while Lennon and Ono were on a break and just screams of a man deeply ashamed of what he's done. Not just "dreaming of the past" but also "feeling insecure" and "losing control".  The more I read about Lennon and the older I get, the more I get a little disillusioned with him. There are reports of him funding IRA and The Black Panthers, was he the true visionary,  leader for the left, prophet of the 20th century? 

Or was he a hippy Contrarian? 

It's true that he could be a little of both. Much like Che Guevara, Gandhi or Abraham Lincoln, once an established "legend" around a persons life takes foothold their early life has very little bearing on their eventual legacy. But the fact still remains. They both domestically abused their partners while being famous recording artists. Lennon had the benefit of global acclaim for over a decade before his actions came to light. Also that he was emerging from  a time where a common attitude to violence against women was "she probably deserved it" changes the context slightly from contemporary standards.

I still listen to John Lennon now, I think his song-writing ability stands alone from his actions in private life. Though Lennon's actions were  something I didn't dwell on, why was I so quick to criticize Brown solely based on his discretion's (though as I'm writing this he is in legal trouble due to hitting a photographer in the face. old habits?). 

And this is where my true dilemma lies. If I can't forgive Brown for his actions, and jointly criticized them with his body of work, do I need to apply the same logic to Lennon? If so, do I throw out the Beatles too? also, do we need to hold all artists with violent backgrounds to that standard? 'Be a perfect human being or your work becomes nullified'? I'd hate to live in a world like that.

I was wrong to criticize Chris Browns work because of his actions external to it. I was also wrong to not even consider icons of mine doing the same. Is it ever OK to blame the fans for making someone famous? I don't think it is. I mean for Christs sake, I grew up watching Jackass. We made early 20-somethings famous by watching them shove cars up their ass, smash wood over each others heads and jumping into sewage, We'd scoff at adults  calling it immature by saying they just "didn't get it". Chris Brown is young and very talented. He has a long and successful career ahead of him, he's my age and he's accomplished far more than I ever will because of a healthy mixture of talent, luck and effort. John Lennon was much the same, his was a life cut tragically short by a mentally ill person who wanted to be famous. Perhaps for dying so young Lennon solidified only the latter, nicer "power to the people" side to his persona as his legacy, when there we many  murkier, more violent truths lying beneath. 

But of course music is subjective. You may love one. both, or neither of these artists but you won't be able to deny their profound influence on culture, music and the world. Only time will tell if Brown will be a legend but time has already told us that Lennon is one, whatever he did in the past. 

I liked Lennon's music, I'm not sure if I would have liked him. The major difference between the two from what I've observed is that Brown seems to have a young (largely female) fanbase rabidly defending him and his actions, telling everyone one flippantly to "get over it". While Lennon's seem blissfully ignorant to his transactions. 

I'm going to keep listening to Lennon, his music intrigues me too much to let him slip. I won't forgive,  condone or defend his actions, but I'll enjoy his creation. Also, much to my friends delight, I now have Chris Brown on my ipod... 

I'm not dangerous 
                                                   -Chris Brown

Instant Karma's gonna get you 
                                                                        -John Lennon