Category: News

Chris Brown has apparently taken to his Twitter page to discuss what he feels is blackballing by “the music industry”. Apparently, he walked into a Wal-Mart store and found that the store wasn’t stocking his album “Graffiti”, which came out earlier in the week.

In a foul-mouthed tirade on his Twitter page, Brown accused record stores of not stocking his CD on shelves and lying to customers and also said that the industry could “kiss (his) ass”.

OK-so let’s try to analyze this.

First off-do I really believe that Chris is being blackballed? No. There have been artists who have been in equal amounts of trouble and most retailers didn’t bat an eyelash. After R. Kelly and Michael Jackson got into their child abuse troubles, music retailers didn’t suddenly wipe all their albums off the shelves (Incidentally: Kelly, Jackson and Brown’s albums are all distributed by Sony Music). “Chocolate Factory” sold 3 million copies, “Invincible” and “HIStory” both sold well over 2 million copies. I was working in retail when all three albums came out, and there was never a directive from anyone saying “take those albums off the shelves”. So I find it really hard to believe that there is a mass conspiracy out to get Chris Brown.

Secondly, how many of Chris Brown’s fans actually go out to record stores and buy albums? And if they go to their local record store and don’t find the album, don’t you think they’d just go home, turn their computer on and download the album from iTunes? I could see the guy bitching if his album was out of stock at record stores and his fans had no other way to get the record, but we live in a time when there are multiple options for this sort of thing. If it’s not at Wal-Mart or Best Buy, buy it off of iTunes or Amazon, or mail order it from one of the retailers’ websites.

Is there a lingering bad taste in the public’s mouth resulting from his beating of Rihanna last February? Certainly? “Graffiti” is looking at a first week estimated between 90,000-100,000 units. Not awful, but about 1/3 of what his last album, “Exclusive”, sold in its’ first week and only enough to land him the #5 position on this week’s charts (although it will be the week’s best-selling R&B album). Is it possible that a lot of people who purchased “Exclusive” are turned off by either the beating or Brown’s insincere-seeming press tour or attrition? Yeah. Based on that info, can you say that Brown is being blackballed? Absolutely not.

Listen, people. The name of the game is money. If there’s a demand for Chris Brown’s music, you’d best believe that there would be rows and rows of the “Graffiti” album on every store shelf in existence. No retailer, no matter how noble minded, is going to piss away Christmas season money in exchange for standing up for a principle.

This all brings to mind another question: do we judge an artist on their output as opposed to their personal lives? That’s a tricky question to answer, and I don’t know if I have the answer to that question myself. I’m not really a Chris Brown fan, and I probably wouldn’t have bought “Graffiti” whether or not he assaulted Rihanna, but I can’t say what other music buyers may or may not do.

Your thoughts?

You know I’m a serious fan of the Jacksons when not only did I skip watching my beloved Giants, but I skipped watching my almost-as-equally beloved “Family Guy” to check out the premiere of the new reality show “The Jacksons: A Family Dynasty” on A&E. Granted, the Giants lost (although I managed to catch most of the exciting part of the game) and I was able to watch “Family Guy” on DVR later, but I can still think of several things I could have been doing that would have made better use of my time than watching this series.

I’m not stupid. I know that most “reality TV” is scripted. However, “Family Dynasty” continues a tradition that the Jackson family has been a part of for decades: they think that their fanbase consists of idiots. From Michael repeating that he only had two nose jobs and a cleft put into his chin (and no other surgery) to Janet claiming her “wardrobe malfunction” was an accident, these folks have severely underestimated the intelligence of their followers.

The first two episodes contained plenty of manufactured “drama”, which seemed to have been written by a lower-echelon sitcom writer. When Jermaine takes a lunch break from a studio session, Jackie proceeds to erase his vocals from the track they’ve worked on. After that confrontation, Jermaine and Jackie have a (crocodile) tear-filled heart-to-heart about the feelings of loneliess Jermaine felt when the brothers left him at Motown-back in 1975. Are you trying to tell me that there has never been a conversation about this in the thirty-five years that have passed since the split? That was the first of many eye-rolling events that took place over these two hours.

Of course, the biggest elephant in the room was the fact that Michael was not there. The brothers kept referring to this as a “Jackson 5 reunion” when the most important member of the group wasn’t around (and he was alive when they filmed the first episode). To add insult to injury, youngest brother (and arguably the most musically talented of the five surviving brothers) Randy refused to participate in the show, so we end up with The Jackson…4??? It’s almost hilarious to see them going over a set list that includes “Can You Feel It”, “Lovely One” and “Shake Your Body”, all of which were written and sung by the two brothers who weren’t even there!!

If you’re looking for unintentional comedy, then “The Jacksons: A Family Dynasty” is for you. If you’re looking for a look into one of the more interesting showbiz families of our time, you’re better off waiting for one of the renegade relatives to release a tell-all book, which I’m almost positive will happen at some point.