With Chris Brown performing on another arena tour across New York and New Jersey, Fat Joe thinks it’s time to “move past” Brown’s legal history and give the singer his flowers.
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The Terror Squad boss hopped on Instagram Live over the weekend, where he claimed that the culture would be looking at Chris Breezy on the same level as Michael Jackson if it weren’t for his 2009 assault of Rihanna, Brown’s then-girlfriend.
“If Chris Brown never got into the controversy with Rihanna, we would be calling him Michael Jackson right now,” Joe declared. “Not like Michael Jackson, Michael Jackson. He’s the most talented singer, artist, performer, hitmaker of our time. There’s nobody even close to Chris Brown. And it’s time we move past it, it’s been 20-something years. That I know of, there’s no more incidents. Man, we gonna let this lifetime go by without saying the truth?”
Since Brown’s 2009 assault on Rihanna, he has faced various legal issues, including punching a man in the face in 2013, for which he pled guilty to simple assault; being accused of punching a photographer in 2017, with the charge later dropped due to “insufficient evidence”; ex-girlfriend Karrueche Tran being granted a restraining order against the singer after she accused him of abuse; and more.
Continued Fat Joe: “When the truth is an unpopular decision, everybody gets scared to say it, they get canceled. Especially famous people. The streets, they know what it is. The streets always know to tell you the truth. The streets still bumping R. Kelly. He’s in jail, he did terrible things. They still bumping R. Kelly.”
Fat Joe went on to come to Brown’s defense while declaring him the “King of R&B,” and said he was “a little kid” at the time of his assault on Rihanna.
“So what I’m trying to say is, it’s a shame we’re lying and we’re giving up to the king of R&B. The king of music,” the Bronx native added. “We thinking he could battle Michael Jackson, that’s all I’m trying to say. If you really look at his body of work, you look at all his hits, you see what he does … You remove from your mind that we don’t like it. We don’t like that he had a controversy … He was a little kid 20-something years ago.”
The “Lean Back” rapper is seemingly referring to the February 2009 felony assault of Rihanna, which took place when Chris Brown was 19. The singer was arrested for physically abusing Ri in a car before a Clive Davis Grammy Awards party; he pleaded guilty to felony assault in June that year.
Billboard has reached out to Rihanna’s reps for comment.
Brown reflected on the night in his 2017 Welcome to My Life documentary. “I look back at that picture and I’m like, ‘That’s not me, bro, that’s not me.’ I hate it to this day. That’s going to haunt me forever,” he admitted.
CB’s still on the road for his 11:11 Tour, which will head north of the border for dates in Montreal and Toronto before returning stateside next week with shows in Boston, Philadelphia and Baltimore.
Watch Fat Joe’s share his thoughts below.