Lifestyles Defined Presents: Chris Brown – Fortune Album Review

Chris Brown has been a beacon of controversy in the last few years, from a lover’s scandal between himself an pretty girl Rihanna, to the recent New York City club scene brawl with rapper Drake. The newly appointed ‘Bad Boy’ C. Brown has even been known to turn it up in talk show studios as well. Still with all of this being said; are we to judge good music by the artist’s off stage, and out of studio antics? I personally would hope not!! I think that if an artist puts out a trash album, it should have nothing to do with there personal life…or does it? I’m thinking perhaps we will see by the end of this review of Chris Brown’s newest album ‘Fortune’.

Turn Up The Music: With this being the first song of the album, it was pretty much expected to follow the trend of high energy, fast paced pop music. Or what I like to call “Techno” reborn.
Bassline: This seems to be where the album starts to get interesting, but I could not help but feel as if this song was meant for the movie Tron? The use of stretched sounds and reverberated tones start off sounding cute but quickly become a little annoying as the song goes on. This was definitely a track that I expected to hear Busta Rhymes on, but I guess that won’t be happening considering Chris’s recent bottle hurling onslaught with YMCMB’s Drake.
Till I Die: A little help from rapper Big Sean and Wiz Khalifa makes for a sure hit right? Yea…maybe but here we are again with sound effects that take you right into a coin operated video game, and I’m thinking I’ve had just about enough of these weird sounds.
Mirage: On this track, you have a more hardcore Chris Brown seemingly showing a little bit of vented frustration over a pretty tuff track; featuring Nas. In the absence of the Tron Legacy sounds this made for a pretty good track. Nas does his thing of course but I’m not sure if it was enough to validate Chris Brown from a song singing nice guy into a reformed ‘Hood Dude’.
Don’t Judge Me: Some people ask me, how do I like to judge an R&B album? I reply; with songs like this. These are the ballads that made Chris Brown the favorite amongst fans that he is. Great song, decent lyrics and good to enjoy when you are just thinking to yourself.
2012: More quality from a seemingly lifeless album; 2012 makes me want to construct one of those classic slow jam tapes I used to make back in the days. Good Job on this one Chris!
Biggest Fan: This is a song that comes off a little boring, until you get into the groove of it. Biggest fan doesn’t quite follow the pattern that has been set by track 5’s ‘Don’t Judge Me’, but it should grow on you if you are used to this type of song.
Sweet Love: Very reminiscent of a Prince song is ‘Sweet Love’. Not a bad song; but by this time I would be wondering if you are listening to this album saying to yourself, “This is nowhere as good as some of his prior albums”?
Strip: Ever album needs a strip club song, so here you go. This song goes hard in the club, nicely paced and you would probably want to find the drunkest girl in the club because she will probably do something nasty to this song while dancing with you.
Stuck On Stupid: After track 9 ‘Strip’; I would have thought that the person who arranged this album would have had a little more insight on where to adequately place a song like ‘Stuck On Stupid’. Hmm, makes you wonder.
4 Years Old: Chris Brown’s versatility is certainly displayed here; showing his ability to make songs for the masses and not just one particular group.
Cadillac (Interlude): I wasn’t sure why this was label an interlude, since interludes are seldom five minutes and fourteen seconds long. Never the less this track, much like the previous track; ‘4 Years Old’ is C. Brown’s continued ability to be versatile. I just fear that the listener would have by now stopped listening to the album.
Don’t Wake Me Up: Contrary to the title of this song…yes please, WAKE ME UP! This is exactly the type of song that you would hear at the end of a movie, waking you up to let you know that its time to go and yes; you just wasted $13 dollars on this boring movie.
Trumpet Lights: The finale’ song brings us full circle and back to the high energy and futuristic “tech Tron” type sounds as heard in the first few tracks. Makes you want to get up and dance when you hear it. Not a bad closer.

Listening to this album, I slowly felt my self drifting to a place that I often go around half pass mid-night, a place I like to call ‘Sleepy Land’. As much as I am a fan of Chris Brown and of the good music that he is known to put out, I don’t think that ‘Fortune’ lives up to the standard or the hype of a Chris Brown album. I feel like the album was released because he was contracted to do a certain amount of albums, and not because he really put his all into it. Many of the tracks sound as though they were picked and not produced, like this album was completed sometime ago; and the songs just needed to be culminated into an album that would be titled ‘Fortune’. All in all, this album is worth the iTunes purchase, just don’t expect to play it as much as you would one of his previous albums. Something tells me this will be his last album released under this label, but hey that is just me!

LIFESTYLES DEFINED

-TAWANN