"Obviously she played a part in getting beat, or whatever," said 19-year-old Kristina Coleman. Outside of a Chris Brown concert in Baltimore this past fall, almost a dozen teens interviewed still held some troubling views about "the incident." "They were blaming her."Īnd more than two years later, they still are. "Close to 50 percent of the young people we surveyed thought that Rihanna was actually responsible for the incident," says Casey Corcoran, the former director of Start Strong who led the poll. Just after he beat Rihanna in 2009, the Boston Public Health Commission's Start Strong Initiative polled teens in Boston to see how they felt about the incident. While it has had quite the turnaround, views on an issue that he brought to the forefront two years ago haven't changed much. In spite of this success, a cloud still hovers over Brown's career. He notes that Brown has been a force on both the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, as well the R&B hip-hop singles chart, where he's had five top 10s in the past year. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart this year," Caulfied says. Keith Caulfield, a chart expert at Billboard, says Brown has had a banner year. He released an album that didn't sell, record stores stopped promoting his material, and pop radio, at least for a while, wanted nothing to do with him.īut fast-forward to 2011, when he may have just had his best year ever, at least musically. Then he virtually disappeared from Top 40 radio, after being a staple there since his 2005 breakout hit, "Run It." After what many simply refer to as "the incident," Brown struggled to regain his footing. Casey Corcoran, former director of the Boston Public Health Commission's Start Strong Initiative Brown later pleaded guilty to felony assault and was sentenced to five years of labor-intensive probation and a year of domestic violence prevention classes.Ĭlose to 50 percent of the young people we surveyed thought that Rihanna was actually responsible for the incident. In 2009, just before that year's Grammy Awards show, Brown violently beat his superstar girlfriend Rihanna. R&B singer Chris Brown is back only a few years after what could have been a career-ending incident. Two years after his arrest for assaulting his then-girlfriend Rihanna, many of his fans - mostly teenage girls - blame Rihanna for the incident. Singer Chris Brown meets with fans after performing on NBC's Today show in New York in July.