In her 19 years on the planet thus far, Zendaya Coleman has shown herself to be wise beyond her years in many ways. I love taking note of the positive messages Zendaya puts out into the universe, because she seems like a young woman who wants to help other young women realize that their self-worth comes from more than Instagram likes. I'll admit that I was out of the office last week, which is why it completely slipped my attention that Zendaya released a new single with none other than Chris Brown.
The single samples TLC's "Creep," which is sort of telling, because in his 26 years thus far on the planet, Chris Brown has shown himself to be kind of a huge one. He's got anger issues. He assaulted Rihanna. In other words, Brown seems like a very off-brand choice for everything Zendaya's about.
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On the Grammys red carpet tonight, Ryan Seacrest asked Zendaya about why she wanted to work with Chris Brown. "He's such a talented person, you know?" she responded. "He's held, I think, at a high level when it comes to entertainment because of his ability to dance and his ability to sing. And I wanted to be able to kind of stand next to him and be able sing and be able to dance and push myself to be able to, like, hold up next to someone like that, you know what I mean? So it definitely challenged me, and I think that that's what I wanted, because I wanted to be better."
The singer didn't say anything about why people might have an adverse reaction to her collaborating with Brown. Zendaya only spoke about the positives of working with such a great singer and dancer, which is totally on brand for her. The trouble is that when it comes to working with someone like Chris Brown, can we really ignore the negatives? I mean, it doesn't even look like Brown appreciated the plaudits.
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