Physical 'Graffiti': Chris Brown's release raises the question of art vs. character

If your stomach turns a little at the thought of ever hearing Chris Brown's voice again -- or, for that matter, his name -- get ready for one nauseating winter.

The R&B singer, who pleaded guilty in June to beating his ex-girlfriend Rihanna during a February argument, is set to release his third album, "Graffiti," in December. The lead single, "I Can Transform Ya," recently hit radio, and the follow-up, "Crawl," came out last month.

There's something audacious about Brown's return, and not just because it took a scant three months for him to slide back into album-promo mode after entering his guilty plea. Brown has been exposed in the Rihanna saga, after all, as more than an abusive boyfriend. Promising affection and pleasure in his music but brutish and violent in real life, his love oil turned out to be snake oil: An R&B loverman best known for pleading guilty to a domestic-violence charge is an insupportable contradiction.

But Brown is also a major star (his first two albums have sold more than 4 million records combined in the United States), and he clearly isn't ready to give that up. He might not know how to nail a contrite interview, but he can deliver a first-rate pop song.

He has one on his hands with "I Can Transform Ya," produced by Swizz Beatz. Lil Wayne, whose real name is Dwayne Carter, raps at the start and finish, and his wordplay is minimalist by his standards, an assembly line in which the same words keep rolling by ("I can transform ya, like a Transformer/I can turn you from a human to a Carter. . . . Then my car transforms to a charter").

The song raises an old question with no easy answer: What do we do when a bad person makes good art? Should we ignore the song altogether? That might prove hard in this case. "I Can Transform Ya" is currently No. 27 and rising on Billboard's Hot 100 chart, which means the song will be hard to escape in coming weeks.

What if upon hearing the song you find yourself, despite misgivings, wanting to hear it again? The best thing might be to say you simply like the song but hate the behavior of the man behind it, although it feels strange to think of listening as compartmentalized in that way -- especially listening to pop music, where artists' personalities are so inextricable from their songs.

Maybe the safest course of action is to wait for the inevitable "I Can Transform Ya" remix, in which Chris Brown will be scrubbed from the song and some other rapper or singer will take his place: a retrofitting that virtually every hip-hop hit with a strong instrumental undergoes. That version will be easier to like than the original -- there's just no guarantee it'll be as good.

Jonah Weiner writes for Slate Magazine.