X

Over two years in the making, a period that involved a multitude of revisions and delays, anger management therapy, drug rehabilitation, and a jail stay for parole violation, X surfaced as Chris Brown's sixth full-length studio release in September 2014. In a way, the album is a corrective. The influence of European dance-pop, which resulted in some of Brown's most forgettable material on Fortune, is all but eliminated in favor of contemporary R&B and pop productions that tend to suit the singer better. Brown does maintain his bad boy image. It's on typically full display in the chintzy "Loyal" -- its hook a misogynist pleonasm -- and the part-clever/part-nonsensical string of R. Kelly quotes that is the Trey Songz duet "Songs on 12 Play" ("And I'm feelin' on yo booty, drivin' me crazy, half on a baby"). On "Drown on It," the pied piper of R&B himself joins in, and he and Brown dole out an unsurprisingly cartoonish variety of metaphorical and/or explicit come-ons that include "Just like a male mermaid, baby." Brown combines memorable hooks with some stellar production work on the rubbery disco-funk of "Add Me In" (courtesy of Danja) and the blithe, swaying "Time for Love" (a collab…