Chris Brown Claims Stores Are "Blackballing" New Disc "Graffiti"

Chris Brown's Graffiti is projected to land at Number Three on the Billboard Top 200 this week with sales of 95,000-110,000 albums, per Billboard. But the 20-year-old R&B singer's last album, Exclusive, moved 294,000 copies its debut week in 2007, and Brown thinks he can explain the difference: in a series of angry tweets over the weekend, Brown accused stores of "blackballing" him and failing to stock the album in the wake of his guilty plea for assaulting Rihanna earlier this year.

Brown's Twitter rant ramped up after he stopped into a Walmart in Wallingford, Connecticut, where he couldn't find a copy of his record. "didnt even have my album in the back... not on shelves, saw for myself," he wrote on December 12th. MTV News reports that the Walmart in question had actually sold out of the album. One day earlier Brown posted, "im tired of this shit. major stores r blackballing my cd. not stockin the shelves and lying to costumers. what the fuck do i gotta do..."

In one Tweet, Brown claims that he spoke with the store's managers "and the[y] didn't even know anything. Wow! But they had Alicia Keys album ready for release for this Tuesday comin'… The manager told me that when there are new releases, its mandatory to put 'em on the shelves… BUT NO SIGN OF GRAFFITI. BS."

The album's first two singles, "I Can Transform Ya" and "Crawl," haven't exactly been burning up Billboard's charts, either. "Crawl" has yet to crack the Top 50 on the Hot 100, and "Transform Ya," which features Lil Wayne, only made it to Number 20.

As Rolling Stone reported last week, in the new issue of Vibe, Brown laments that producers for the BET Awards wouldn't let him perform during a Michael Jackson tribute last June, when he was still in the middle of court proceedings attached to his Rihanna altercation.

Related Stories:
• Chris Brown Laments Missed Michael Jackson Tribute in Vibe
• Chris Brown Tells 20/20 Rihanna Cried After Hearing "Changed Man"
• Chris Brown's Post-Plea Prospects: Will R&B Star's Career Survive?

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Song Stories

“(We're Not) The Jet Set”

George Jones and Tammy Wynette | 1973

George Jones and Tammy Wynette were still married when they recorded the tongue-in-cheek "(We're Not) The Jet Set." The lyrics, written by Nashville songwriter Bobby Braddock, who also penned Wynette's "D-I-V-O-R-C-E" and Jones' "He Stopped Loving Her Today," make fun of the good life by declaring, "We're not the Jet Set/We're the old Chevrolet set." Braddock recalled that while writing the song, he needed the name of a city that evened out the rhyme he had with "Riviera" and "Missourah." “I got out a Rand McNally atlas," he said. "In the first part are the maps. The last part is an alphabetical listing of cities. I wanted a rustic, small-time sound. I went to the listing for Missouri. And I found 'Festus.' I loved the sound of it."

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