Chris Brown: Still King of the Prom?

Can the embattled R&B star's music make the grade on the school-dance scene?

By Joal Ryan Mar 03, 2009 6:11 AMTags
Chris Brown, RihannaKevin Mazur/Getty Image

Chris Brown has been banned by radio stations, suspended by Wrigley gum and not exactly asked back for a second frosty glass by the Got Milk? campaign.

But even as the R&B star's career crumbles under the weight of an ongoing police investigation into his alleged attack on girlfriend Rihanna, Brown can take a measure of comfort in the calendar: Prom season is coming.

DJs and a prom-planning expert say Brown's music is still spinning at school dances this winter, and likely will be in rotation come the spring's tuxedo-and-gown affairs.

"The kids are still putting it in the list, I'm disappointed to say," says Lu Ann Haslam, a Southern California high school teacher who advises prom organizers worldwide as Patty the Prom Pro.

According to at least one survey, Brown's "With You" was the No. 1 prom song of 2008. "No Air," Brown's duet with Jordin Sparks, was another favorite of sweaty-palmed slow dancers.

Neither song is a top 10 request at Haslam's own school this spring (unlike Rihanna's "Anything"). Still, in general, Haslam expects the tunes and other Brown hits to get played because the numbers are neither lyrically X-rated nor viewed as promoting violence—the two big no-nos with schools, she says.

Brown, 19, was arrested Grammy night on suspicion of making a criminal threats. And while he has issued a nonspecific apology, he has not been convicted of a crime, much less arraigned.

"I don't think it's reached the point where principals and administrators are going to object," Haslam says. "Now that may change [if] he goes to trial."

Matt Cohen, the Sacramento-based DJ known as DJ MC, says he hasn't had any client, school or no, nix Brown's music—and for that, he sounds grateful.

"Sixty percent of the music you can't play already [at school dances], and now they want to ban more music?" Cohen says. "Brown's music is relatively clean on a scale of cleanness."

Jimmy Harris, a Memphis-based DJ, said in an email that he, too, continues to play Brown music as frequently as ever: "I haven't limited my playlist in any way."

In New York City, however, at least one DJ has. The DJ KL says, by personal choice, he won't play Brown at the school dance he's scheduled to work next week—"not unless something dramatic happens."

"I would say initially it was kind of up in the air," the DJ says of his initial reaction to the Brown news. "I didn't want to jump on the bandwagon."

But DJ KL says he changed his mind after he saw the police photo of a battered Rihanna. "It looked like the dude really tried to hurt her, and that's not cool," he says.

The DJ says he thinks the allegations have become a situation for both Brown and Rihanna, with Rihanna's music threatening to take audiences out of the moment as much as Brown's. (He still plays Rihanna, though.)

"Any good DJ will tell you the crowd dictates what works, and when you play something and the crowd turns to you," DJ KL says. "We'll see how it all works out."

Cohen, who, post-Grammy night, received a request from a 30-year-old birthday girl to play Brown and Rihanna songs back-to-back, sounds most confident that, barring a conviction, things will work out for Brown and prom night.

"It's like when Michael Jackson was accused of child molestation," Cohen says. "People didn't stop playing Michael Jackson."