In a series of statements posted to his Instagram stories on Friday, rapper Chris Brown expressed anger over people still "hating him" for assaulting Rihanna back in 2009 when they were a couple.
"If y'all still hate me for a mistake I made as a 17-year-old please kiss my whole entire a**," Brown said. "I'm f**king 33. I'm so tired of y'all running with this narrative . . . All y'all can suck my d**k disrespectfully."
Following his initial statement, Brown shared a selection of photos of white male and female celebrities who have also been accused of physically assaulting partners, offering them as examples of times in which cancel culture did not go after them in the way it was applied to his own "narrative."
Along with images of Sean Penn, Mel Gibson, Nicolas Cage and Emma Roberts — to name a few — Brown posed the question, "Where are [sic] the cancel culture with these white artist that date underage women, beat the f**k out their wives, giving b**ches AIDS. Oh. That's right . . . they are your buddies. No more fake love from me . . . stay out my way or get ran over. Simple as that."
Brown's assault against Rihanna took place in their rented Lamborghini after a pre-Grammys party in 2009, and resulted in both of them canceling the performances they were scheduled to give at the awards ceremony later than night.
According to a sworn statement given to a Los Angeles detective, Brown had "punched Rihanna repeatedly in the face and arm, even biting her ear all while maneuvering their rental down the street," per reporting from E! News. Photos of Rihanna's battered face, leaked by a person the performer referred to in a Vanity Fair article as "a very nasty woman who thought a check was more important than morals," still circulate to this day.
Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.
In 2010, Rihanna spoke about the assault in an interview with W Magazine saying "At first, I completely shut down. But now I feel like this happened to me so I could be a voice for young girls who are going through what I went through and don't know how to talk about it."
Rihanna is currently expecting her second child with A$AP Rocky and performed a fantastic halftime show at the Super Bowl.
Chris Brown, prior to his statements made tonight, most recently made headlines in 2022 when a civil suit was filed by a woman who claimed he'd raped her on a yacht in Miami in December 2020.
Shares