CHRIS BROWN: Royalty Album Review
A Review of Chris Browns Album Royalty
ARTIST: Chris Brown
ALBUM: Royalty
LABEL: RCA Records
RELEASED: December 18 2015
Royalty, Chris Brown’s seventh studio album named after his daughter is an eighteen track album which was released last month is mostly an R&B album with fusion of some other genres and a dose of the very common trap music (Every album has that these days).
The album opens with the singles released before the album dropped which helped the album in some way on the charts. Back To Sleep which is a really lovely song, baby making music. Production so good and I loved the video to it too. Fine By Me has him singing about the lady who only shows him love at certain times and occasions in his life, and he wants them to be together but it suits him just fine. Wrist is that trap song featuring Solo Lucci with a rap verse, has the normal trap song features, nothing special here. Make Love has to be one of my favorites off the album, song writing not bad at all on this but was I the only one who felt it ended too abruptly, like an anticlimax, no? OK
On Liquor he’s talking the effects the bottles are having on him and Zero is more of a pop-electro track telling that he really doesn’t care about what they had anymore, sounds like she’s a stalker too. The song was also one of the pre-released singles which did pretty well with airplay.
So, Chris Brown decided to do some sampling on some tracks on the album but they really could have been done properly. Samples of Keith Sweat’s Nobody, Nate Dogg and Warren G’s Regulate, R.Kelly’s I Can’t Sleep and Jodeci’s My Heart Belongs To You, for his Who’s Gonna (Nobody) track, Picture Me Rolling, Discover, and Proof respectively, for someone who is a song writer, he can do better with the sampling bit. Though, these sampling doesn’t do any damage to the songs, they are still good songs on their own.
Little More (Royalty) talks about love, inspiration and hope, Day One as it implies is for the ones that have been with him a long time coming, Blow It In The Wind is a feel good song, love the beats and vibe to the song, KAE is another of my favorite on the album and U Did It featuring Future closes out the album nicely, didn’t really feel Future on this one.
Royalty made the number one spot on the UK R&B Albums chart and number three on the US Billboard 200 right after Adele and Justin Bieber’s albums. Chris Brown has been on the straight and narrow with his music after his many issues with the law and media, and compared to his last album X, I wouldn’t say Royalty comes off as better. He has shown us what an awesome writer he can be, for an album that is named after his baby girl, the lyrics don’t match up, too many expletives and he can definitely do better. He needs to focus a bit more, write down his lyrics and even though the cuss words are no big deal in the American world today, I’m not sure his daughter would love listening to “her” album like this.
Review by Aisha O (@hahishaa)
