The girl can sing, indeed, and on Anti, all of the focus is on that voice and her appealingly wayward personality, singing about sex, love, drugs, desire and frustration as if her life depends on it. Without all the practised song-craft that usually knock the wind out of listeners, what she has come up with is atmospheric, sexy and strangely disturbed, tapping into the kind of distorted beats and chilled tempos that burble through progressive hip hop. ... lead single Work. Even that doesn’t exactly sound like a banging pop hit but at least it tugs at the ear and gets under the skin, and in so doing, adds interesting dimensions to Rihanna’s established image.
How come a review that positive be a 3 stars only?
Metacritic gave Artpop 61/100 so their opinion is ****
metacritic doesn't do Reviews, they compile all the (more or less) professional Reviews made of albums, Movies, games etc and by that you get a medianscore.
if anti gets 3/5 from one paper, and 5/5 from Another, the "metascore" is 4/5 or 80%
Telegraph must always rush out some BS low ball reviews; they gave ST its only yellow review and it was the very first to get posted on MC, too IIRC. Edit nvm that was another UK paper.
What were you expecting? I've been saying it for over 3 months now that critics will bomb her after that mess of an era! Just like with Unapologetic and the critics focusing on Chris Brown!
Love on the Brain
Opening like Beyoncé’s Superpower, Love on the Brain’s vintage soul sound is another sonic curveball. Featuring a loping, bluesy guitar figure, you can almost picture her leaning on a dusty bar nursing a drink and looking for someone to tell her story to. Weirdly, you could also imagine Duffy singing it, which is quite unsettling, actually. In the second verse her voice does things I’ve never heard her do before, which might mean it’s a guest singer who has not been credited but there’s definitely a bit where she suddenly channels Erykah Badu. A surprising highlight.
