Chris Brown is off his interview hiatus. The Grammy winner, who pledged not to do interviews for a year, opens up with Hong Kong’s Prestige magazine regarding a plethora of topics including music, art, music videos. In addition, the 23-year-old puts on his gentleman cap for a fun-filled photo shoot.
Check out some excerpts from the interview below:
On Who He Is & What He Stands For…As a 23-year-old young entertainer, I want the world to see my art and hopefully be inspired by it, promote positivity with what I do now â with painting, with fashion, with directing, with creativity as far as videos and cinema. I want to have people admire that and hopefully have people follow in my footsteps.
On Having Fun… Honestly, my day-to-day life is the most fun right now because I get a chance to not focus on “the artist” Chris Brown. Going through the regular things, like going to the grocery store. I’m also running a label right now, so I have different artists, four or five different acts, shooting videos that I’m directing and coming together.
On Crossing Genres…Definitely with Fortune that’s the direction I wanted to go, but even with the F.A.M.E. album. What I wanted to do was not set the bar with a certain kind of style. I didn’t want people to say. “He’s just R&B.” Yes, I will sing an R&B song. But then I’ll do a pop song, then I’ll do a song with a country kind of feel, a reggae feel. I always want to be eclectic with my music. I don’t think music has a race. I think music has a soul and it’s just a feeling. What evokes the set of emotions from you is what I try to bring out…whatever flows, whatever I feel, I just write.
On His Painting…I’ve been painting secretly since I was a kid. A lot of people didn’t know that it was my hobby. I focused on doing the bad stuff at first with graffiti and vandalising as a kid. But as you get older, you start studying art books and sketchbooks in the libraries. I started getting better, like maybe three or four years ago. I met Ron English and Kid Zoom [Ian Strange] and they were just teaching me different techniques for painting. So my art started growing and I started doing it on my own. I finally got people to recognise it and I did a couple of art galleries â one in LA and one in New York â and I sold four out of my seven paintings. You know, I’m new. But my feet are in the water and that’s all it takes. I don’t think I want to conquer painting. It’s just something I love to do.
On His Best Acting Experience…My best acting experience? I can’t say. Every movie, I’ve learned something, whether it be directing, whether it being editing, even learning the lines. Learning from different people. But I can definitely say one of my favourite movies is the one I just did â Battle of the Year. I had a crying scene. Most of the guys on the set were goofballs. Everyone was like 23 or younger. So they were sitting around and laughing the whole time the camera was not on them and they were trying to make you laugh the whole time. But you’ve got to stay in character, so that was probably the most challenging thing I had to do, and also being able to do more serious scenes with more established actors. You want to show them that you’re serious, don’t want to come off like, this is fake.
On What Fans Should Know About Him…Just how involved I am with everything. I think a lot of people, a lot of artists, they get the glamour and glitz and everything else is already set for them. You see it and you say, “Oh man, it’s perfect.” But everything is already written. For me, it’s all just straight from thin air. I hear a song [claps his hands] â that’s my concept. When you hear my records, it’s really me writing. It’s really my emotions. It’s really me behind the cameras, directing those videos. It’s me making the decision on what singles we put out. Being the CEO. A real businessman at 23. That’s what I want to show my audience. The generation that we’re in â we’re a lazy generation. The kids in my generation are not as hyper. The work ethic isn’t there. The attention span is short. But I think if they can see me do it at 23 and have all this stuff going on â and still have fun while I’m doing it â who’s to say they can’t?
For the full interview, visit Prestige.
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