It’s hard to find anything positive to say about Benny Benassi‘s new Chris Brown collaboration, “Paradise.” Even if you ignore that it’s a prime example of electronic music culture being appropriated for mainstream audiences, its style is dated by a number of years that makes it far from relevant even by those standards.
Don’t get me wrong – there was a window of time when collaborations between artists like David Guetta and American top 40 hip-hop and R&B artists helped to introduce U.S. audiences to electronic music. However, that window opened with Akon’s “Sexy Bitch” and closed with Rihanna’s “We Found Love.”
As talented of as performer as he is, nobody should be tricked into thinking that Chris Brown was intimately involved in the creative process behind “Paradise.” That’s just not how pop music works. As such, the responsibility to come up with a challenging concept that still retained enough mass appeal clearly fell on Benny Benassi’s team – and what they came up with simply fails to contribute anything meaningful to the conversation.
With how oversaturated the EDM movement has become, it now befalls artists like Benny Benassi to push innovation instead of resting on their laurels and profiteering from their previous work. With any luck, he’s still got it in him to put out something with the same forward-thinking drive as tracks like 2003’s “Satisfaction,” even if “Paradise” says otherwise.
