Chris Brown makes a roaring statement with new neck tattoo

Chris Brown has a new tattoo … and it's definitely not an image of Rihanna.

The controversial singer debuted his latest bit of body art on Tuesday, and let's just say he wasn't going for small and subtle. Brown had a huge image of a lion tattooed on the center of his neck, which must be one of the only areas of his body that isn't inked at this point. The 23-year-old shared a personal photo of the tat on Twitter, captioning the photo: "Symbol of Christ and Freedom!"

Brown is big on symbols — and the last one he etched to his body stirred up quite a bit of controversy. In September, he revealed another new addition to his body art collection — the face of a female on the side of neck — and quickly there was speculation that it was of Rihanna. Complicating matters, the woman's face had a strange marking on it, which brought about comparisons to Rihanna's battered face after Brown assaulted her in 2009. A rep for Brown quickly issued a statement saying the tattoo was actually "a sugar skull (associated with the Mexican celebration of the Day of the Dead) and a MAC cosmetics design he saw. It is not Rihanna or an abused woman as erroneously reported." Brown also posted his own comment on Twitter, writing, "I'm an artist and this is art. Dia de los Muertos."

For now, Brown's tributes to Rihanna seem to be delivered in the form of video. After dumping his aspiring model Karrueche Tran earlier this month, The "Don't Judge Me" singer posted a video in which he drunkenly discusses being in a love triangle with both Tran and Rihanna, who he became friendly with again after they did a remix of her song "Birthday Cake." "Is there such a thing as loving two people?" he muses in the video, which shows footage of both women. "I don't know. I don't know if that's possible but for me, I just … I feel like that."

In a new interview with Vogue that came out this week, Rihanna talked about Brown. Not revealing whether or not they are more than friends, she says the whole situation is nobody's business but their own. "They're not on the inside," she said of critics who can't understand how she's forgiven him. "They can't see what I see, unless they're sitting in my point of view. I guess I'll learn to accept that."

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