Chris Brown has opened up about the violent altercation that led to the demise of his romantic relationship with Rihanna, admitting she was ‘spitting blood’.
In a new documentary titled Chris Brown: Welcome to My Life, the hip-hop star, who was arrested and charged after punching his then girlfriend in 2009, has described how he ‘busted her lip’.
You can watch Chris’s confession on tape in the candid documentary footage:
The singer, now 28, recalled how a fight began after a woman he had previously slept with turned up to a Grammy’s party in February 2009, causing Rihanna emotional distress.
Chris describes how, on the way home, distrust grew and things turned violent, saying:
She starts going off, she throws the phone ‘I hate you!’, whatever, whatever. She starts hitting me, we’re in a little Lamborghini. You know, she’s fighting me, and I’m like ‘Look, I’m telling you the truth, I swear to God, stop it.’ So then she hits me a couple more times. It doesn’t go from translation to ‘Let’s sit down, I’m telling you the truth.’
So now I’m gonna be mean and be evil. Like I remember she tried to kick me, just like her beating shit.
But then I really hit her. With a closed fist. Like I punched her, and it busted her lip. And when I saw it I was in shock, I was ‘Fuck, why did I hit her like that?’
So from there she’s spitting blood in my face, it raised me even more. It’s a real fight in the car, and we driving in the street. I’m like ‘Yo, we tripping, what the fuck, what are we doing?’
Brown claims Rihanna then grabbed his crotch while scrambling to get his phone, so he bit her on the arm while he was driving, before pulling into Los Angeles’ Hancock Park.
Brown added:
…Me? I felt like a fucking monster. A lot of the times, I look back at that picture and I think ‘that’s not me bro, that’s not me’. I hate it to this day, that’s going to haunt me forever.
The documentary details the couple’s early days, from Rihanna’s first meeting with Brown, through their meteoric rise to superstardom.
Brown relished the chance to give his side of the story, saying:
Mutual sides, it is the first time I get to say anything. I still love Rihanna, but I’m just going to be honest – we would fight each other, she would hit me, I would hit her, but it never was OK.
He described the couple’s ‘power’, dubbing the pair ‘real life rockstars at 16, 17 years old, because you could just just whatever you want’ in an ominous indicator of the criminal behaviour that was to come from Brown.
While the admission of domestic violence is a brave one, and the desire to rehabilitate after committing an atrocious act upon a loved one is admirable, this documentary stinks of a money-making self-aggrandising PR stunt from Chris Brown’s team.
It contains a narrative that attempts to explain away wrong-doing and diffuse the fact that, ultimately, domestic violence is a crime that cannot be excused by passion, age or ignorance.
If you are trapped in an abusive relationship or know someone who is suffering at the hands of domestic abuse, you are not alone. Please call the anonymous 24-hour National Domestic Violence Freephone Helpline on: 0808 2000 247.
A former emo kid who talks too much about 8Chan meme culture, the Kardashian Klan, and how her smartphone is probably killing her. Francesca is a Cardiff University Journalism Masters grad who has done words for BBC, ELLE, The Debrief, DAZED, an art magazine you’ve never heard of and a feminist zine which never went to print.