Chris Brown - Chris Brown [2LP]

Chris Brown's self-titled 2005 debut introduced a teenage singer and dancer from Virginia with serious pop instincts, and it arrives here as a 140-gram double LP.

He was just 16 when the album came out on Jive, and the label surrounded him with some of the hottest producers of the moment, including Scott Storch, producer of the breakout single Run It!, whose crisp, skittering beat carried it all the way to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and made Brown a star almost overnight.

The rest of the record plays to his strengths as an all-round entertainer. Yo (Excuse Me Miss) is a smooth, flirtatious mid-tempo charmer, while Gimme That bounces with playful confidence. Say Goodbye, a tender breakup ballad, showed he could carry a slow song with real maturity for his age. Across its four sides, this edition also gathers extra cuts and remixes, including the Run It! remix.

It is a polished, youthful record, built as much for the dance floor as for late-night radio, and it remains one of the defining R&B debuts of the mid-2000s.

For listeners who grew up with these songs, this double LP is a welcome blast of nostalgia, and a reminder of just how fully formed he sounded from the very start.