Neither the official fall leaves nor Chris Brown's new album X are here quite yet, but there is a little something for fans of both... Ahead of the release date of Brown's X, yesterday his collaboration with Kendrick Lamar, "Autumn Leaves" leaked online, and it's a heavy weighted yet light sounding R&B love jam.
Falling in a similar vein of his latest official single "New Flame" (feat. Usher & Rick Ross), "Autumn Leaves" both slows things down and takes the lyrics to broken love and does so in a compelling, truly beautiful way.
"And I hold on like leaves in fall to what is left," Brown sings in the first verse, with an equal amount of pain, beauty and quite remorse. While two of these three things aren't immediately associated with Brown as a person, he can truly sell the emotions in his music and does so successfully on "Autumn Leaves."
For Lamar's guest voice, he initially matches Brown's quiet, subdued energy. "So the iceberg never broke / And I poked at it and poked at it and poked at it," he raps at the beginning, symbolizing the quiet, slow destruction of a relationship. In the type of way only Lamar can do, he builds with emotion, eventually exploding not unlike the story behind this song.
And it's all much more gorgeous than it should be.
Listen to Chris Brown and Kendrick Lamar's "Autumn Leaves" below, via HipHopDX:
"Autumn Leaves" is a track from Chris Brown's new album X, which is due to hit stores on Tuesday, Sept. 16. Lamar isn't the only big name featured artist on the record. In addition to Usher and Ross, X also features guest verses from Jhene Aiko, Lil Wayne, Tyga, Trey Songz, R. Kelly and Akon.
