This article references domestic abuse and assault.
A swollen black eye, a bloody mouth, forehead contusions and a split lip which healed to form a permanent scar. After Rihanna was assaulted by Chris Brown in 2009 – and the photos of her battered face infiltrated every corner of the internet – it felt for a moment like public sentiment would never again be in Brown’s favour.
To be confronted with such graphic images of Rihanna’s injuries felt horrifying. What followed was both frenzy and furore, punctuated by Rihanna’s tell-all interview with Diane Sawyer, Brown’s ill-advised apology video and numerous court appearances.
Fast forward to 2025, and Brown is back in court. He has been charged with grievous bodily harm for allegedly smashing a tequila bottle over a music producer’s head at a London nightclub back in February 2023. He was arrested in Manchester earlier this month and has been released on bail. He has yet to enter a plea for this case.
Several fans were in attendance at his first court appearance, and there will likely be a flurry more when he appears at London’s Southwark Crown Court on 13 June.
It’s become a familiar pattern. One which began to crystallise in the wake of that fateful night with Rihanna. For a man less amiable than the then 19-year-old Brown, the infamous assault, which he pleaded guilty to, could easily have been career-ending. But Brown had boundless talent, good looks and charisma on his side. The carefully engineered qualities that had established his squeaky clean persona had created a solid foundation on which he could rebuild his image.
Brown was given a chance at redemption — a gesture which at the time wasn’t commonly afforded to celebrities, particularly, you might have thought, when the injured party was beloved megastar Rihanna. And in the 16 years that have followed, he’s sustained a successful career, selling out stadiums as far flung as South Africa and racking up 40 million album sales worldwide.
At the time of the Rihanna assault, his core fanbase was largely lovestruck teenage girls — many of whom were probably too immature to grapple with the gravity of the situation. But what started as a relatively modest showing of support has since morphed into an army of apologists, dedicated to insulating Brown entirely, with the question of whether he might or might not have transgressed being seemingly irrelevant.
This goes very much against the flow in the world of modern celebrity, where cancel culture is rife and even being linked to these sorts of allegations, whatever the truth of the situation, can be fatal. Of course, Brown may be innocent, and the trial will resolve that for us in due course, but in the meantime, when accusations such as these are career-ending for so many, it’s fascinating that that does not appear to be the case with Chris Brown.
His former teenage fangirls are now grown women, many of whom have fortified a parasocial relationship with the singer, which has become unbreakable. Elsewhere on the internet, where swarms of pitiful men feel emboldened to back Brown, some perhaps disingenuously, but others do so in all seriousness. Young TikTok users have also barged their way into the conversation, meaning there’s no shortage of comedic-style content being created in Brown’s defence.