Rihanna And Chris Brown: The Saga Continues

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Rihanna and Chris Brown perform together in Dec 2008.

Scott Gries/Getty Images

Rihanna and Chris Brown perform together in Dec 2008.

Just about 3 years after he vigourously assaulted her, RB thespian Chris Brown is behind with cocktail star Rihanna — musically, during least. On Monday night, any expelled a remix of one strain from their recently expelled albums. Both underline a other party, and both are causing utterly a stir.

The conjecture built for days. Last week there were rumors Rihanna competence recover a remix to one of her songs and that Chris Brown would guest on it. Then right on cue, a day of her 24th birthday, Rihanna did it. She tweeted a remix to “Birthday Cake.” Featuring her still-on-probation ex-boyfriend.

But wait — there’s more. That same day, Chris Brown tweeted a remix to one of his songs, a lane called “Turn Up a Music.” And yep, we guessed it. Rihanna sings a hook.

The Internet’s jaw dropped.

“Something is not right with them,” says Natalie Hopkinson, a contributing editor during The Root. “These are dual deeply uneasy people that substantially need to get off Twitter and spend some time on someone’s couch, operative it out.”

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Like many other writers online, Hopkinson wasn’t happy with Rihanna and Brown’s low-pitched reunion. Headlines called a songs “stomach-turning” and “unbelievable.” They critiqued Rihanna’s strain in particular, for a lyrics that confused a line between pleasure and pain, and could be interpreted as alluding to Brown’s attack of her.

For Hopkinson, it wasn’t usually a pithy inlet of a lyrics, or a summary a settlement competence send about domestic abuse.

“They’re normalizing this impossibly aberrant and deviant behavior,” she says. “And afterwards on tip of that, they’re doing it for their possess personal gain, their record company’s personal gain, a bloggers’ personal gain, a clicks, a page views.”

But Maura Johnston of a Village Voice says we shouldn’t rush to decider a singers. “I always am heedful of attributing motives to people in pop,” she says. “Especially now when we have ways that we can disseminate a persona that aren’t indispensably your persona.”

And disseminating personae is something Brown and Rihanna are intensely good at. Both are staples of a blogosphere, and any has millions of Twitter followers, who took to a duo’s new strain this past Monday with roughly concept support.

One of those Twitter supporters is Cherice McGlone, a sophomore during Howard University in Washington, D.C. For her, a duets were a pointer of something more. “I feel like they’ve been behind together for a while, though they’re usually now vouchsafing a open know. I’m cold with it,” McGlone says. “I adore black love.”

But, she says, a remixes aren’t usually about love.

“The categorical goals of a songs were money, publicity. ‘Why not pull courtesy to my song, beget some-more revenue?’ we would do it,” she says. “Makes some-more money, we know? The open is gonna eat that up. Whether good or bad, a open is gonna be articulate about it.”

Howard sophomore Earl King agreed. “They did it for love, means they do adore any other,” he says. “They’re gonna make income off it too — good money. And it competence means some backlash, though their fans are gonna support them.”

Whether a songs are a wink, a lick or a income grab, Johnston says she knows one thing is clear: “I don’t consider possibly of a songs is good during all.”

Not that that will still a storm.