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Celeb News: 'Unapologetic' reviews: Mixed so far
Member Since: 6/19/2010
Posts: 7,259
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'Unapologetic' reviews: Mixed so far
This is the first official review for Rihanna's 7th studio album 'Unapologetic', which counts to Metacritic.
The Guardian:
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Hearing Rihanna sing her abusive partner's praises makes this a deeply disturbing listen, however good the tunes.
You don't even have to listen to Rihanna's seventh album to set alarm bells ringing. You merely have to look at its track listing. There, sandwiched between a collaboration with singer Mikky Ekko called Stay and the intriguingly titled Love Without Tragedy/Mother Mary comes track 10: Nobody's Business (feat. Chris Brown). Uh-oh.
If nothing else, Nobody's Business is – if you'll pardon the phrase – one in the eye for the kind of person who tells you modern pop music has nothing new to offer: it's hard to think of another perky disco-house number featuring a victim of domestic abuse duetting with her abuser about how perfect their relationship is. "Could we become love's persona?" they coo, prompting the answer: no you probably can't, because three years ago, one of you beat the other one up so savagely he left her with major contusions either side of her face, a bloody nose, a split lip and bite marks on her arms and fingers, an incident she told police was symptomatic of an "ongoing and escalating abusive relationship".
You'd listen to Nobody's Business with your jaw on the floor if you weren't well primed for what to expect. Vast swathes of Unapologetic's lyrics appear to be concerned with Rihanna and Brown's relationship. You get a lot of stuff about how exciting dangerous men are, the appeal of affairs that are wrong but feel right, how no one else can match up to him. "I pray that love don't strike twice," offers Love Without Tragedy, again inviting an inevitable response: you want to pray your ghastly on-off boyfriend doesn't, either. You could dismiss all this stuff as merely wildly misguided and naive were it not for the fact that elsewhere, Unapologetic actually appears to play on the incident in question.
"Your love hit me to the core, I was fine til you knocked me to the floor," she sings over a loping, drumless reggae rhythm on No Love Allowed. "Dial 911 it's a critical emergency." Rihanna might argue with some justification that a lot of other people have made money from her relationship with Brown, so why shouldn't she? Furthermore, perhaps, she's only telling the truth about how she feels. But that doesn't make hearing it any more edifying. Still, the whole thing must come as quite the spirit-bucking tonic for any listening domestic abusers.
Leaving all that aside to concentrate on the music is a big ask. But it's worth noting that, sonically, Unapologetic is a far more interesting album than its predecessor. Rihanna is as responsible as any artist for the homogenisation of the Top 40 into the same weary pop-dance template. It gets used over and over again because it's commercially successful, and it's been more commercially successful for Rihanna than anyone, providing the basis for S&M, The Only Girl in the World, We Found Love and Where Have You Been. And yet, it's largely absent here, the David Guetta-produced Right Now notwithstanding. That sounds less like a song than a bid to break the world record for cramming current pop cliches into three minutes. Elsewhere, however, the various producers seem to have been minded to try something different, or at least to rearrange voguish sounds into less familiar shapes. Fresh Off the Runway piles on distorted synthesisers derived from Joey Beltram's 1990 rave classic Mentasm until it sounds weird and disorientating. What Now attempts to weld a walloping brostep drop to a sensitive acoustic guitar and piano ballad with suitably peculiar results: there's a fantastic moment towards the end where producer Ighile throws in a widdly-woo guitar solo, apparently in the mistaken belief that the track wasn't yet preposterous enough.
During its best moments, you're struck by the suspicion that Unapologetic's producers might be trying to undercut the lyrical content. Numb apparently returns to the subject of Rihanna's personal life – "Can't tell me nothin' … I don't care, get closer to me if you dare" – but the music doesn't sound defiant: it lurches and drags along, an oppressive mass of slowed-down voices and grating electronics. Pour It Up's invitation to splash your cash in a strip club is set to a weird, disjointed, gloopy backdrop: it doesn't sound like much fun there, a sensation compounded by a particularly dead-eyed vocal. You get another one of those on Jump, ostensibly an unmissable invitation to frenetic sexual activity in Rihanna's boudoir, rendered intriguingly weird by her delivery. "Ride my pony, my saddle is waiting," she sings, blankly, as if she finds the prospect of frenetic sexual activity only marginally more attractive than having a verruca frozen off. So there's stuff here that's worth hearing, if you could untangle the music from the artist's personal life. But you can't, and furthermore, you get the feeling that the artist doesn't want you to. Perhaps it's quite a cold and canny move masquerading as an outpouring of unpalatable emotion, playing on the public's prurient interest in her love life. Perhaps that's too cynical. Either way, for all its musical value, listening to Unapologetic is a pretty depressing experience.
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Guardian.co.uk
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Member Since: 11/2/2011
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Member Since: 4/1/2010
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Member Since: 9/16/2011
Posts: 6,130
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You could probably take the "s" off of review, considering this is the 1st and only professional review that counts for Metacritic...
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ATRL Contributor
Member Since: 9/14/2010
Posts: 78,921
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Mixed reviews is far better than positive or negative. They are, after all, written by ONE person.
Anyone who takes the Metacritic system seriously is a ****ing idiot and needs to breathe some damn air.
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Member Since: 12/7/2011
Posts: 21,578
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Another review thread from Disturbia  You BETTER STAN!
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Banned
Member Since: 10/13/2008
Posts: 20,553
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OK? The only negative reviews will be from people who focus on the Chris Brown collab, just like TTT's negative reviews were people focusing on the fact that it was her 6th album in 6 years, instead of the actual music.
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Member Since: 12/14/2011
Posts: 21,274
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Quote:
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Hearing Rihanna sing her abusive partner's praises makes this a deeply disturbing listen, however good the tunes.
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I mean that's 100% true; it was one of my main criticisms of the album when I first heard the snippets.
I just think the biggest problem is that the tunes themselves are not great.
But ayeeeee Disturbia, stan!
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Banned
Member Since: 12/5/2011
Posts: 14,156
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Member Since: 9/20/2011
Posts: 13,921
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You better stan sis. I saw your name perched in the Unapologetic thread.
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Member Since: 6/19/2010
Posts: 7,259
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Reported again?  For ****ing what? In that case all Metacritic related threads should be locked. It's not my fault that critics don't love the album.
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Member Since: 4/1/2010
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Banned
Member Since: 12/5/2011
Posts: 14,156
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Quote:
Originally posted by thewaitinggame
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Yes. But, it wasn't official review. It was first listen or something like that.
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Member Since: 2/23/2012
Posts: 7,699
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Well at least it's supposed to be more experimental than TTT 
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Member Since: 6/19/2010
Posts: 7,259
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Quote:
Originally posted by iHeartRihanna
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You don't see a difference between preview and review? All of these articles aren't rated and I was the first who posted THE first official review, which counts to Metacritic and has a score. Bye.
Quote:
Originally posted by iHeartRihanna
Yes. But, it wasn't official review. It was first listen or something like that.
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You answered it yourself.
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Member Since: 5/20/2012
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Quote:
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listening to Unapologetic is a pretty depressing experience.
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Screaming.
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Member Since: 8/19/2011
Posts: 37,346
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After seeing what "critics" did to Lotus and Fortune (talk about the person rather than review the music (even tho Lotus is lame either way), I don't care much for reviews or opinions other than my own.
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Member Since: 1/6/2011
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Member Since: 1/28/2009
Posts: 20,640
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Quote:
Originally posted by Desert Rain
Screaming. |
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Member Since: 5/3/2010
Posts: 26,013
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The controversy 
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