Track Review: Chlöe & Chris Brown, “How Does It Feel”

The road to Chlöe’s debut solo album has been quite rocky, chaotic even. After scrapping her first four solo singles from the album’s tracklist and relaunching the campaign with “Pray It Away,” the older half of Chloe x Halle set her fanbase ablaze with the announcement of her latest single: “How Does It Feel,” a duet with Chris Brown.

Chris Brown, who has a troubling history of violence against women, was an understandably controversial choice of collaborator. Chlöe & Co. are in search of a legitimate hit to launch In Pieces, and they chose the male R&B artist with the most commercial pull right now — with no regard for the optics of their alignment inside and outside of Chlöe’s fanbase. The only way this collaboration will find any justification for its existence is if actually becomes a success — because it’s certainly not a particularly memorable or great song.

“How Does It Feel” samples Dionne Warwick’s “You’re Gonna Need Me” by way of Hitmaka’s ridiculously lazy interpolation of Just Blaze’s production on Usher’s “Throwback.” Both Chlöe and Chris deliver respectable vocal performances (although Chris's reliance on Auto-Tune is quite grating), but it’s Hitmaka’s insipid production that stunts the song. “How Does It Feel” is frustratingly stagnant; the song sits in the same place for its entire duration and forgoes building to any kind of climax. Chlöe’s voice has enough weight to keep the song relatively engaging, but, ultimately, the song feels like an interlude that overstays its welcome. The conversational tone of Chlöe and Chris’s verses tries its best to redeem how unimaginative and drab the production is, but it doesn’t quite succeed. “How Does It Feel” certainly isn’t a bad song by any means, but it feels stylistically shallow — a definite step down from the progress she made with “Pray It Away.”

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Score: 60