Chris Brown is gearing up to bear it all this fall.
Last night (August 15), the singer hopped on Twitter to announce that his eighth studio album, Heartbreak On A Full Moon, will hit stores on October 31st. In addition to the reveal, Brown also formally released his latest single “Questions,” which interpolates soca star Kevin Lyttle’s 2003 smash “Turn Me On,” to all streaming services.
The new record joins a long list of singles that have preceded Brown’s long-awaited album. Since its announcement, Heartbreak has spawned hits like “Party,” “Privacy,” and “Grass Ain’t Greener,” all of which have earned gold and platinum RIAA certifications.
Back in May, Brown unveiled a whopping 40-song tracklist for the album, calling it a double album.
In addition to dropping a brand new album this fall, Brown has also made his feature documentary debut in the form of his Chris Brown: Welcome to My Life, which was officially released on August 8. Earlier this week, a clip from the doc made its way online, finding the singer expressing his “haunting” experience on the night of his 2009 arrest for physically assaulting his then-girlfriend Rihanna.
In a new breakout from the film, Brown explains his relationship with the singer, from the time they met as teenagers to when things took a turn for the worse. According to Brown, his relationship to Rihanna turned sour after he told the singer that he slept with another woman early in their relationship. “After that, my trust was lost with her. She hated me after that,” he confessed. “I tried everything, she didn’t care. She just didn’t trust me after that. From there, it just went downhill because there were too many verbal fights, physical fights as well. Mutual sides. We would fight each other. She would hit me, I would hit her and it never was okay.”
Describing the dysfunctional nature of their relationship from that point on, Brown said, “There was always a point where we’d talk about it like, ‘What the f—k are we doing? Like, ‘I don’t like you slapping me.’ If I go on stage I got a scratch on my face and I gotta explain it like, ‘Oh, no I fell.’ If you got a scar or a bruise you gotta put makeup on. I’m not ever trying to put my hands on any female.”
Most of their issues weren’t public until things exploded on that infamous night in 2009 before the Grammys. According to Brown in the documentary, after the woman he had relations with early in his relationship with Rihanna approached the couple at an event, things came to a head. Later that night, Brown said he gave Rihanna his phone to prove that he did not have a relationship with the woman and the songstress happened to actually find a message from her.
“She starts going off, she throws the phone,” he recalled. “I hate you.’ Starts hitting me. We’re in a little Lamborghini. She’s fighting me. I’m like, ‘Look, I’m telling you the truth, I swear’… She hits me a couple of more times and it doesn’t go from translation to, ‘Let’s sit down, I’m telling you the truth.’ It goes to, ‘Now, I’m going to be mean, be evil.’ I remember she tried to kick me, but then I really hit her, with a closed fist, I punched her. I busted her lip. When I saw it, I was in shock. I was like, ‘F–k, why the hell did I hit her?’”
From there, the lives of both singers changed.
“I look back at that picture,” Brown recalls, before continuing, “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.”
The full documentary, Chris Brown: Welcome to My Life, is available now.