Member Since: 9/8/2012
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Quote:
Can We Admit That Rihanna's 'ANTI' Is Better Than Beyoncé's 'Lemonade?'
The pageantry of Beyoncé’s latest opus, Lemonade, is undeniable, but the sleeper empowerment album — and key Grammy contender for Album of the Year — is Rihanna’s ANTI.
Lemonade’s uneven quality is born from the innate contradiction of her insistence on control and the unmet requirements of actual candor. So, while “Hold Up” and “Sorry” bravely hoist up the first half of Lemonade with structured outbursts and bottled rage, “Sandcastles” and “Six Inch” hunker down like wordy explanations of her marital malaise, a songwriter’s Easter egg hint that all these verses must closely hug a theme and that continuity may stifle flourish.
“Freedom” and “Formation” suffer these sins as well, though they’re markedly more upbeat, mimicking better songs. Kendrick Lamar’s manically vague symbolism and the marching “Formation” drumline (a typical BeyHive rallying cry — think “711”) are familiar notes for her, dropping only cursory references to an earned freedom (from what? And how?), and the signifiers of her race politic (“baby hair,” “Negro nose”). Much of these cultural clues are lost in her gumbo, as the songs’ climaxes single out her individual wants and not the reality of this complex politic, which seems to affirm a Black aesthetic while embracing the long blond tresses of whiteness. Like, how can she “not crave material things” and grind from “Monday to Friday stacking her paper”? Are the Second Amendment “Daddy Lessons” a real nod to Southern justice or a veiled shout-out to the violent rites of patriarchy? Maybe these proclamations are the permissible paradoxes of a complex mega-star. Or maybe that dissonance is deafening — and often crippling.
Conversely, where Beyoncé tends to turn her albums into deliberate exercises — squeezing the most festivity out of a release while stunting on the full execution of a guiding concept — Rihanna runs free. Every ANTI song sounds like #mood. The Barbados enchantress spikes the narrative about her by embracing it and then flipping a finger to it. (“Didn’t they tell you that I was a savage/F**k your white horse and a carriage.”) In these skyward gunshots, she’s everything lovable about Rihanna, destroying the feeble savior complex but acknowledging her sharp edges can be a repellent. Her subtle contrasts, her not caring about our ideas of “romance” and her pleading loudly for respect, attention and consideration from her lovers, instill rebellion in the album’s gradual movement from a humble-brag about sexual prowess to a truly humble breakdown of internal isolation.
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Read the full article here: http://www.bet.com/music/2016/06/15/...l?sf28774004=1
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