What I Do

"What I Do" — Chris Brown Featuring Plies, End of a Decade

A Career in Complicated Territory

The final days of 2009 were not a neutral moment for Chris Brown. The events of February that year, widely documented and still generating intense public conversation at year's end, had fundamentally altered the context in which his music was received. Brown had been one of the most commercially dominant young artists in R&B and pop, a performer whose dancing, vocal versatility, and natural charisma had generated an enormous fan base and a string of chart successes. The question of how that career would continue under the weight of public scrutiny was being answered in real time through the releases he put out in the latter half of 2009.

His album Graffiti, released in December 2009, arrived in this complicated atmosphere. The project represented Brown's attempt to demonstrate musical range, to show that he was capable of sonic ambition beyond the straightforward R&B and pop formulas that had defined his earlier work. "What I Do," a collaboration with Florida rapper Plies, was among the tracks pulled from that project for single promotion.

Plies and the Florida Rap Tradition

Plies had established himself by 2009 as one of the more commercially successful voices in Southern rap, known for a direct, street-level lyrical approach and a vocal style that emphasized authenticity over technical complexity. The collaboration brought a harder edge to Brown's typically glossy production sensibility. The combination of Brown's polished R&B delivery with Plies's more assertive rap style produced a dynamic that the track navigated through a split between verses and a hook that called on each artist to operate in their most comfortable territory.

Florida rap had developed its own distinct identity through artists like Trick Daddy, Trina, and Pitbull, and Plies was part of that continuing lineage. His presence on "What I Do" gave the track a geographic and stylistic grounding that differentiated it from the more studio-polished material that surrounded it on Graffiti.

One Week, One Chart Entry

On December 26, 2009, "What I Do" debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 at number 88. That single appearance at number 88 represented the track's entire chart life, as it did not return to the listing in subsequent weeks. The one-week debut-and-exit pattern reflected the commercial reality of the album cycle at that moment: Graffiti was generating mixed commercial returns overall, and individual tracks from the project were not sustaining the kind of radio pickup that would have driven extended chart presence.

The December release timing placed the single in one of the most competitive weeks of the annual chart cycle, when holiday purchasing patterns and year-end retrospective programming made it difficult for new material to gain traction. That context matters when reading the chart numbers.

The Album Context

Graffiti was a commercial disappointment relative to Brown's previous releases, and critics at the time were divided on whether the project represented genuine artistic growth or an attempt to obscure commercial calculation behind sonic experimentation. The album touched on rock influences, synthesizer-heavy production, and collaborative features that were designed to signal versatility. "What I Do" was on the more conventional end of that spectrum, a track that felt closer to the rap-R&B fusion that had defined much of Brown's commercially successful earlier work.

The album's underperformance reflected the cumulative effect of the year's events on Brown's commercial standing, as radio programmers and retail chains made decisions that reduced the music's mainstream visibility. That reality cannot be separated from any honest accounting of the period, even when discussing a specific track on its individual merits.

A Snapshot of a Career at an Inflection Point

Looking back at "What I Do" from the vantage point of more than fifteen years, what is most striking is how clearly it represents a moment of transition and uncertainty. Brown would continue releasing music and regaining commercial ground, producing further hits across the following decade. But the December 2009 moment was one in which the outcome was genuinely unclear, in which the audience was making decisions about what role, if any, this artist would continue to play in their musical lives.

The record exists as a document of that uncertain moment, the work of a talented performer navigating circumstances that had no clear precedent or playbook, with a collaborator who brought his own distinct energy to a production that needed all the help it could get.

"What I Do" — Chris Brown Featuring Plies's singular moment on the 2000s charts.