By Chris Nguyen
Features Editor
Rihanna
Rated R
Interscope Records
Rihanna is back with her new album Rated R—and she is angry.
In the year and a half since the release of her breakthrough album Good Girl Gone Bad, Rihanna has become arguably the biggest pop artist of the decade and has had the gossip blogs’ tongues wagging about her personal life, culminating this past February with a violent fight with her then-boyfriend Chris Brown that was followed by very public make-ups, break ups, court dates and a photo of her disfigured face immediately after the event.
The whole spectacle is fairly recent that most would be forgiven to think that Rihanna would be taking a long break away from the limelight. Instead, she has come back guns ablaze since announcing her album in October via Twitter. And she allows the scandal to drive the album, lending it an air of immediacy and rawness that marks it as Rihanna’s first true album rather than a collection of singles and filler.
Nonetheless, this is still a Rihanna album, meaning style takes precedent and it is for the better. Chase Status, The Dream and Tricky Stewart, who produced the bulk of the album, help overshadow Rihanna’s limited and bland vocals with an edgy rock-hip-hop hybrid that would sound more at home on a 50 Cent album.
It is a formula that thrills more times than not. On “Wait is Ova” and current single “Hard,” Rihanna rides the industrial rock beats with confidence and command. The songs lead off the album as Rihanna’s message that everything is just fine after the incident thank you very much.
And for all the posturing, such as her the black and grey imagery of the album cover or the frequent expletives that pepper the album, the songs, intentionally or not, delve into Rihanna’s state of mind after the whole spectacle. She is tired, confused, combative and sad.
“Russian Roulette” makes note of sticking through a terrible relationship even as she declares her independence and strength two songs previously (And you can see my heart beating/You can see it through my chest/And I’m terrified but I’m not leaving). While on “Fire Bomb,” against a triumphant melody, Rihanna acts as a lover whose only assertion of love is to burn together. And before once again championing her freedom on “Rude Boy,” she ends the album on a bittersweet and ambiguous note with “The Last Song” (What if you wasted love and our love in time disappeared and the sad song ends up being the last song you’ll ever hear/It was ours/But I’d do it again holding hands with my friend again).
Although Rihanna had little hand in the writing and production, Rated R is a personal record of a woman scorned and literally beaten by love and trying to live again and reflects the conflicting thoughts. Ironically, for a pop star who is known for her aloof vocals and lack of personality as a pop star, Rihanna has created an album that possess a rare ingredient in mainstream music today: sincerity.
