Chris Brown grabbed a fan’s phone during a recent concert and tossed it into the crowd after she refused to stop recording herself.
The singer, currently on tour in Europe, was performing his 2007 track “Take You Down” for the young woman, who was seated on stage. When she first pulled out her phone to capture the moment, Brown gently took it from her hand and placed it on her lap.
But the fan just couldn’t bear to experience the celebrity lap dance IRL and picked up the phone again to record it. Brown, clearly frustrated, took the device from her again and chucked it into the crowd.
“F**K DAT PHONE,” he wrote in an Instagram Story after video of the phone toss hit social media.
“Shawty got her phone back too…”
@ellishatok #chrisbrown throws fans #phone ♬ original sound - Ellisha Tok
@jesjaaade I don’t blame him! #chrisbrown #chrisbrownthrowsphone #undertheinfluencetour #undertheinfluencetour2023 #fyp #foryou ♬ Call Me Every Day - Chris Brown
On social media, reactions were mixed.
“Listen, I totally agree that sometimes we all need to be able to put our phones down and enjoy the moment… but that’s not Chris Brown or anyone else’s decision to make,” blogger Ken Barbie tweeted.
“It is impossible to defend chris brown he just keeps doing stuff,” read another.
But, someone else opined: “Chris Brown isn’t the problem here. He tried to put her phone down nicely the first time. If she wanted to be on her phone she didn’t need to be on stage. She was rude.”
Another tweet read: “Lowkey i see why Chris Brown threw the phone. U mean 2 tell me imma be up here performing my heart out, giving u the best that I got and u gonna be up here checking urself out in selfie cam. The disrespect?”
During an Instagram Live in January, Fat Joe criticized fans who pay to go to concerts only to watch everything on their screens. “If you go to a show, and you pull your camera out and you’re recording, you’re not really in the moment,” he said. “You’re recording what’s going on. You’re not enjoying it.
"If you can feel the moment, if you can be in the moment, not recording … You can live in the moment."
Earlier this year, Bad Bunny took to social media to explain why he grabbed a fan's phone and threw it into a body of water after she tried to snap a selfie with him. “The person who comes up to me to say hello, to tell me something, or just to meet me, will always receive my attention and respect,” he wrote, in Spanish. “Those who come to put a f**king phone in my face I will consider it for what it is, a lack of respect, and I will treat it likewise.”