With so much progress made toward sexual and gender equity — both legal and cultural — since the dawn of the #MeToo movement in late 2017, I was disappointed last week to see promoter Live Nation touting convicted domestic-violence felon Chris Brown as the headliner for KS 107.5’s annual Summer Jam concert.
Perhaps disappointed isn’t the right word. Enraged? Smacking my forehead like a loose shutter in a hurricane? Sad for all the women I know or have ever met? Those might be better.
The Aug. 25 concert at the Pepsi Center is yet another date on Brown’s Indigoat Tour, which was rolled out nationally last week to promote his new album. The parties involved needed to coordinate before revealing the late-summer event, and most of them seemingly decided the bad publicity would be worth the profit. They include Denver radio station KS 107.5, which is owned by Entercom Communications, the Denver office of national promoter Live Nation, the Pepsi Center (owned by Kroenke Sports & Entertainment) and Brown’s record label, RCA.
As of press time, none of them have responded to my requests for comment on the propriety of booking Brown, or the thinking that went into it.
It’s not that they’re solely responsible for his career. The fans who have forgiven him, the people who stayed quiet during his misdeeds and the corporations that were only too happy to collect the revenue of his work all continue to play a role in supporting him.
But my immediate thought last week was that Brown must be thrilled to see a major venue, promoter and radio station throwing their collective weight his way with the top spot at what will assuredly be Colorado’s biggest R&B and hip-hop show of the year.
How does Brown keep getting away with this? Other powerful men who have been recently convicted and/or repeatedly accused of violence and sexual assault, such as R. Kelly, Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby, have seen their reputations rightly destroyed and their legal fees skyrocket. So what’s different about Brown? Is it his bad-boy persona — cartoonish and vile though it now seems — and the fact that it predated the #MeToo era? The aforementioned men saw their crimes aired publicly over the past couple years, while Brown has been coasting (albeit bumpily) on sympathy and apologies for more than a decade.
Time doesn’t heal all wounds, but it does blunt memories of their gore. Brown is already persona non grata with anyone even slightly progressive about women’s rights, given his history of incidents — alleged and proven — and his 2009 guilty plea in the brutal assault of singer and then-girlfriend Rihanna. And yet he remains in power in the larger culture. With platinum sales, Grammys and a legion of ride-or-die fans (see his 30-million-plus Twitter followers) the 30-year-old’s career isn’t disappearing. He brings attention and money wherever he goes, whether it’s a nightclub, a performance stage or a soundstage.
But he also reminds us how far we have to go as a society in allowing open, unabashed abusers to continue entertaining us and taking our money, even after we know exactly what kind of people they are.
And it is all about money. Nearly 40 other venues across the U.S. have decided it’s OK to book Brown for his latest tour — and not because everyone who works for them implicitly endorses his violent, misogynistic behavior. This is a massive and complicated system, and once the wheels get turning any one person risks getting crushed trying to stop them.
If Brown had earnestly apologized to Rihanna (as opposed to just reading a prepared statement), owned up fully to his misdeeds, or changed his troubling behavior — as some celebrities have attempted (think Lance Armstrong or Mel Gibson) — he might have found a genuine path to public forgiveness. He’s also dealt with addiction and gone to rehab, which is understandably gut-wrenching for anyone. But he’s also been offered help, repeatedly, and continued burying himself with new, equally terrible behavior while enjoying access to resources and support the majority of us will never have.
As recently as 2017, model and former girlfriend Karrueche Tran successfully obtained a restraining order against Brown after she said he threatened to kill her. And in January of this year, Brown was arrested after a 24-year-old woman accused him and two others of aggravated rape in a Paris hotel room, a case that is still ongoing. Brown was released without charges after the incident and is suing the woman for defamation (although he failed to show up for a formal meeting with lawyers in France last month, according to The Associated Press).
Brown’s criminal record has seen him banned from most of the world’s large English-speaking markets — including the U.K., Australia and New Zealand — and since abusing Rihanna in 2009, he’s been further accused of fraud, hit-and-run, additional cases of felony battery and even a police standoff.
I’m not here to litigate Brown’s public persona or offer hard evidence for or against his reputation; it’s pretty clear at this point what kind of person he is. Rather, I’m expressing disappointment that major music-industry and concert-exhibition machinery are still supporting his career and putting money in his pocket after his nearly unbroken string of illegal, immoral and alarming public controversies.
As Denver’s Comedy Works realized last year with admitted sexual predator Louis C.K., the act of refusing to book a big-name talent on principle can net more publicity and goodwill than succumbing to the lure of increased revenue from a controversial figure — even one who has been rightly lauded in the past for his creative talents.
It may be true that troubled souls are common in show business. But women, and especially women of color, deserve to be taken seriously when they report violence and sexual assault against them. Thinking of Brown as “troubled” and in need of help doesn’t do justice to the people he has exploited and hurt, often permanently, while he continues to tour the world and collaborate with top-tier artists.
Brown’s continued career — and even worse, his vaunted spot on KS 107.5’s biggest concert of the year, with the help of Live Nation, the Pepsi Center and RCA — is a stain on Denver’s summer calendar.
Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get entertainment news sent straight to your inbox.
Democracy depends on journalism, and journalists need your help. Support The Denver Post and get unlimited digital access —
the first month is just 99 cents.
