Celeb News: Unapologetic: 61/100 @ Metacritic based on 24 Critics

Duca

Metascore
65 out of 100
Generally favorable reviews based on 16 Critics

86 Billboard Original Score: 86/100

On paper, Rihanna releasing her seventh album in seven years would suggest a quantity-over-quality work ethic that's bound to wear thin. But on "Unapologetic," Rihanna proves once again that she can set -- and often raise -- the bar for modern pop music.

Amping up on urban, dubstep-leaning R&B and scaling back on the often awkward sex jams that populated the second half of 2011's "Talk That Talk," "Unapologetic" is Rihanna's most confident, emotionally resonant work since 2009's "Rated R." There's hard-hitting club songs ("Phresh Out The Runway," "Pour It Up," the Ginuwine-sampling "Jump"), feel-good dance jams (David Guetta-produced "Right Now," Chris Brown duet "Nobody's Business") and a surprising abundance of heartfelt ballads (lead single "Diamonds," "Stay" featuring Mikky Ekko, the confessional suite "Love Without Tragedy/Mother Mary" and bonus track "Half Of Me"), all of which showcase Rihanna's voice in ways the listener hasn't heard before. Like previous Rihanna projects, "Unapologetic" is destined to crank out at least five singles over the next 12 months (or until it's time for the next album, anyway).

83 Entertainment Weekly Original Score: B+

Just how controversial is Rihanna's new album? That depends on how worked up you get about rhyme schemes like this: ''Your love is infectious/Let's make out in this Lexus.'' She might've stirred up headlines when she invited her ex Chris Brown to sing that line on ''Nobody's Business,'' which borrows its title (and its '80s R&B sound) from Michael Jackson's ''The Way You Make Me Feel.'' But the album is far less defiant than its title suggests, with just as many lovely moments by the piano (''Stay'') as there are dubstep-warped bangers (check out the massive club rave-up ''Jump,'' which nods to Ginuwine's equestrian-love classic ''Pony''). After last year's Eurodisco romp Talk That Talk, the only thing shocking here is how vulnerable she sounds.

70 All Music Guide Original Score: 3.5/5

In 2012, right on schedule, Rihanna delivered her fourth annual November album. The singer took a different route with the lead single. She didn't go with a dramatic ballad like "Russian Roulette" or a big dance number like "Only Girl (In the World)" and "We Found Love." Instead, the nod went to a midtempo pop ballad, "Diamonds" -- as in "We're like diamonds in the sky" (rather than stars in a mine), a simple and effective, light in meaning yet massive in sonics, quasi-processional. Even with that change of pace, the possibility of it signaling an overall change in direction was slight. Not only is Unapologetic just as varied as Rihanna's past albums -- it's another timely refresh of contemporary pop music -- but it's a little more exploratory and a whole lot deeper, too. Continuing the trend that began on Rated R, Rihanna's at her best when she's flaunting. This goes for "Pour It Up," a characteristically chilly and booming Mike Will collaboration that might as well be a sequel to "Bandz a Make Her Dance," the producer's hit with Juicy J. Wrapped in a serene sneer, Rihanna's trash talk is something else. Moments such as that one are so convincing that the few everywoman heart-on-sleeve songs -- with the exception of the massive, slamming, wailing power ballad that is "What Now" -- don't sound all that natural. Two of the album's most intriguing, contrasting, and not-so-everywoman tracks appear consecutively during the latter half. Both of them were written and produced by Terius "The-Dream" Nash and Carlos "Los" McKinney. "Nobody's Business," flecked with elements from Michael Jackson's "The Way You Make Me Feel," is a beaming if somewhat belligerent disco-house duet with Chris Brown. Rihanna's partner proposes to make out in a Lexus prior to proclaiming that the relationship "ain't nobody's business." The celebration is followed by "Love Without Tragedy/Mother Mary," conjoined songs with a wide theatrical scope akin to that of the-Dream's own "Nikki, Pt. 2/Abyss." Over a swelling and receding production with echoes of Kim Carnes' "Bette Davis' Eyes," Rihanna mourns ("Felt like love struck me in the night/I pray that love don't strike twice"), then confesses ("Mother Mary, I swear I wanna change"), then surrenders ("I'm prepared to die in the moment"). Perhaps no one should read anything into it. The same could be said of "No Love Allowed," which comes along a little later. Even with a captivating, drum-less reggae groove, it's hard to hear lines like "Your love hit me to the core" and "It's so foolish how you keep me wanting more" and think that she's fine and could be singing about anyone. While this is a fine, if uneven album, the only way to enjoy a significant portion of it is by taking it as pure entertainment. Good luck.

63 Chicago Tribune Original Score: 2.5/4

In celebrity annals, few things are more attention-grabbing – or degrading – than working out an abusive relationship in public.

On Rihanna’s seventh studio album, “Unapologetic” (Def Jam), the singer one-ups the exploitation industry by dueting with her former boyfriend and abuser, Chris Brown, to declare that their tempestuous romance is “Nobody’s Business.” Initial reaction: This dysfunctional couple has turned the track into a sick marketing ploy. You can even dance to it! The production casts the song in strings, piano and a four-on-the-floor kick drum, a canny merger of Chicago stepping music and golden-age house.

But there’s no escaping that Brown battered Rihanna in an ugly lover’s spat in 2009. He pleaded guilty to felony assault and received probation. Both artists resumed their careers under a microscope, their every word parsed for hints about their relationship.

Neither performer went away, even for a brief time. Brown maintained a largely business-as-usual distance on albums that continued to sell, and Rihanna churned out annual, even more commercially successful albums and tours. The 2009 “Rated R” album found her by turns defiant, haunted and vulnerable, as personal an album as she has ever made. Subsequent releases found her burrowing deeper into effervescent dance pop, with songs that promised ecstasy on the dancefloor or in the bedroom as escape from the world outside.

With “Unapologetic,” Rihanna turns contemplative again, enlisting an army of production gurus, song massagers and hitmakers, from dance maven David Guetta to ace R&B songwriter The Dream. As an artist who has sold more than 25 million albums, Rihanna now makes music by corporate committee. She receives not a single writing or production credit on the new album. And yet nearly every song feels like it’s telling her story, painting a larger picture than just the haphazard collection of singles that was “Loud” (2010) and “Talk That Talk” (2011).

Rihanna hasn’t entirely abandoned hooky, uptempo pop anthems. “Unapologetic” continues her embrace of cutting-edge, Skrillex-era dance rhythms, the squelching synthesizers and wobbly bass lines of dubstep. “Phresh off the Runway,” “Jump” and “Pour it Up” celebrate live-for-the-moment hedonism. But in the context of an album dominated by ballads and at least superficially introspective lyrics, they feel like respites, a chance to get “Numb,” as one song title declares.

The latter features a disappointing rap cameo from Eminem, who obsesses about his duet partner’s anatomy. Maybe it’s intended as comic relief, because much of “Unapologetic” is a tough listen, ostensibly a pop album from one of the biggest pop stars of our time that’s dark and emotionally complex. Despite what Rihanna claims on “Nobody’s Business,” many of the songs portray a narrator who is troubled, anxiety-ridden, lost. It’s likely no coincidence that “Unapologetic” next slides into what is the album’s emotional centerpiece, “Love Without Tragedy/Mother Mary.” Over a vast, open space of vaporous keyboards and distant factory clang, the narrator sings about a turning point in her life: “Who knew the course of this one drive/Injured us fatally/You took the best years of my life/I took the best years of your life.”

Talk about a mixed message. Even Rihanna sounds confused. Glancing references to that “one drive” and that night ripple through the album, like an echo that will never fade. The characters in these songs linger in a limbo of mixed emotions, emotionally attracted to a lover and yet uneasy about the next step. In the stripped-bare piano ballad “Stay,” Rihanna sings, “Funny, you’re the broken one/But I’m the only one who needed saving.”

Fans of celebrity subtext could wallow for months in the hints and allusions. Those who abhor exploitive marketing may be drawn to the songs like a bad car crash. How much of this is Rihanna and how much of it is just a soap-opera steroid, a way to pump up sales? That the question even has to be asked is disturbing.

60 Slant Original Score: 3/5

Why should we believe anything Rihanna says anymore? She seems disingenuously interested in using the incident tabloids regard (with some justification) as the most intriguing story in her life as an artistic crutch. As her private life continues to disappoint people for whom said incident is, according to the title of her new album's best and most tactless song, "Nobody's Business," she conversely drops allusions to it in the most indiscreet manner. Now that the bruises have healed and crazy/stupid love is reportedly once again blooming between Ri and Chris Brown, is she blaming her audience for her abuser's continued PR nightmare? If so, the lyrical flirtations with disaster that pop up throughout Unapologetic represent one of the most grotesque distortions of "blame the victim" syndrome in pop-music history, a form of Stockhausen syndrome that passes the buck onto the casual bystander. I guess it's our fault for being so "interested" in what's being shoved down our throats.

If only the music were compelling enough to back up the supreme bad faith, we'd have the R&B punk masterpiece Robyn "Can I Get a Face Tattoo?" Fenty is clearly aspiring toward, what with that cover art of her bare torso scrawled over with word graffiti, hashtags, and other labels that could be taken as either self-inflicted branding or armor from her fans who both support her and misinterpret her relationship with Brown. The album, her fourth consecutive Thanksgiving release in as many years, does deviate from the lush, comfortably predictable club-banger formula that drove the main singles from Loud and Talk That Talk straight to the top of today's uniformly pile-driving pop charts. But more than any of the three albums that preceded it, Unapologetic sounds exactly like the sort of album that would've been cobbled together in a flurry of rushed assembly-line activity, with most of the high points operating independent of each other—except for the implicit directive to emphasize Rihanna's belligerent willingness to play devil's advocate with her own public persona. Though she feigned contemplative in 2009's Rated R (the first album in the immediate aftermath of Browngate), she's since come to the conclusion that she'd rather stay tough, beating up on those who would dare show concern.

Accordingly, Unapologetic comes hard out of the gate with "Phresh Out the Runway," a Joey Beltram-swiping chopped-n'-screwed rave anthem in which Rihanna tells anyone who doesn't respect her crew they need to ****ing step off. "How could you be so hood, but you're so ****in' pop?/How could you be so fun and sound like you're selling rocks?" she barks, against a track co-produced by The-Dream and David Guetta. Mostly frontloaded with urban-aimed midtempo tracks, Unapologetic moves from the swampy "Numb," on which Eminem declares himself the "butt police," and the skittering, pitched-down "Loveeeeeee Song" to the ice-cold "Jump," an echoey dubstep torture chamber in which Rihanna emotionlessly interpolates the chorus of Ginuwine's "Pony" to incongruously depressing effect. Somewhere, Channing Tatum's G-string is frowning.

When the album's second half diverges into lighter musical territory, Rihanna keeps the tone down and dirty with as many disquieting references to her cracked love life as she can muster. "I'm prepared to die in the moment," she informs on "Mother Mary." "Like a bullet your love hit me to the core/I was fine 'til you knocked me to the floor/And it's so foolish how you keep me wanting more/I'm screaming 'Murderer!'" is the picture she paints on the beatless, eerily chirpy electro-ragga "No Love Allowed." And then there's the album's icky centerpiece: "Nobody's Business," yet another post-reconciliatory duet between Rihanna and Brown, which adds insult to injury by accompanying lines about getting down in a Lexus (to say nothing of the hypocrisy of forging a collaboration that will by virtue of the teaming raise eyebrows, and then preemptively telling everyone off for paying attention) against the most mellifluously seductive dance grooves on the whole album, in part borrowed from Michael Jackson's "The Way You Make Me Feel." The conflicted feelings the track raises could shatter a disco ball. While compelling on its own terms, Rihanna never seems to figure out that being Unapologetic isn't the same thing as picking fights on the dance floor.

60 The Independent (UK) Original Score: 3/5

The fact that Rihanna has released seven studio albums in seven years does little to diminish the impression that if you flipped up her impassive panel of a face, you'd find circuit boards and wires.

The big story in the lead-up to the pointedly-titled Unapologetic is that she's not only forgiven her abusive ex, Chris Brown (who has had Rihanna's battered and bruised face tattooed on his neck), but she's back with him, and he guests on the equally defiantly-named "Nobody's Business". An Auto-Tuned, Jacko-sampling piece of piano-house, it would be inoffensive and sweet enough, were it not for the Punch & Judy saga behind it.

Like most of Unapologetic, it's instantly forgettable. Created with the usual international team of collaborators (from Sia to Labrinth), packed with the usual half-hearted, sexual single-entendres ("ride my pony, my saddle is waiting ...") and sung in a voice that's flatter than Norfolk, it's a true representation of Rihanna's personality. That is to say, it's dull as dishwater.

By the time you reach the track called "Get it Over With", you're begging the album to comply.

60 The Telegraph (UK) Original Score: 3/5

The seventh album in seven years from the hardest working (& hardest partying) woman in pop. Rihanna records vocals on the road to backing tracks created by hot songwriter-producers like David Guetta & Stargate. Hardly surprising it’s a mixed bag. For the first half, melodious vocals sweeten pushy dance club tracks full of abrasively ear catching sound effects and often weirdly off centre beats. The second half switches to ballads, disco, reggae and naff rock for a gob-smacking defence of her confused love for R’n’B star Chris Brown, who notoriously beat her up in 2009. Breezily defiant disco duet Nobody’s Business suggest these two ridiculous narcissists deserve each other but tortured ballad suite Love Without Tragedy / Mother Mary introduces shades of self-doubt into pop’s least edifying yet most compelling soap opera.

60 The Observer (UK) Original Score: 3/5

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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With her seventh album in seven years, "Unapologetic," Rihanna is finally growing up. Over the past few years, the Bajan crooner's albums were dotted with kitschy double entendres about private parts ("Cockiness (Love It)") and hat-tip anthems to knocking back shots ("Cheers (Drink to That)"). Her public image has been both slandered and bolstered by her personal decisions: she's back in a friendship with her former lover Chris Brown, has been snapped by the paparazzi smoking marijuana on vacation and tweets expletives in strings.

But on "Unapologetic" (Nov. 19), pop's busiest bad girl shapes up, focusing on matters of the heart over flaunting her musical middle finger. Yesterday (Nov. 10), Rihanna debuted the album for fans and press at Jay-Z's 40/40 Club in Manhattan. To gain entry to the event, Rih Rih permitted access only to those who brought supplies for victims of Hurricane Sandy, adding to her own donation of 1,000 sleeping bags to the Daily News' Hurricane Sandy relief effort.

Rihanna arrived after the album's first play-through, making her way to VIP in black stockings, untied Timberland boots and a red-and-gold jacket adorned with bird stitching. She greeted label personnel including Roc Nation's Jay Brown and Def Jam's Gabe Tesoriero, demurely sipping a drink as fans gawked from general admission.

Her professionalism shone through, another facet of the confident yet love-perplexed grown woman behind "Unapologetic." For an album title that underlines a lack of personal remorse, the 24-year-old is simultaneously vulnerable and commanding on the 14-track offering, enlisting guests including Future, Eminem, Chris Brown, David Guetta and Mikky Ekko to help shape the diverse project.

There are times where she lets her walls crumble, trading pledges of romantic allegiance to Ekko on the emotive ballad "Stay." She gives into urges on "Loveeeeeee Song" featuring Future, where the two duet, "I don't want to give you the wrong impression / I just want your love and affection." And on album standout "Get It Over With," co-written by James Fauntleroy and Brian Seals, her voice floats over a smoldering arrangement, hovering above a warren of harmonies. "I keep wondering, won't you just ****ing rain / And get it over with?" she sings.

Though self-reflective, she still likes to have fun. Ri playfully samples Ginuwine's hump-dance anthem "Pony" on "Jump," cutting the deadpan chorus with a blistering dubstep breakdown. Previous collaborator David Guetta helms the sinister opener "Phresh Off the Runway" and zippy "Right Now," while "Love Without Tragedy / Mother Mary" interpolates The Police's "Message in a Bottle."

The LP's most surprising delight comes in the form of her duet with Chris Brown, "Nobody's Business," where they trade lines over a disco-kissed beat. "You'll always be my boy," she sings, to which he responds, "You'll always be my girl."

It's at the end of the album that Rihanna sheds light on her greatest frienemy: the fame. Onlookers who swarmed her upon arrival were given a listen to the Emeli Sandé-penned deluxe edition bonus track "Half of Me," a percussive ballad where the heroine explains that she's more than just surface. "I'm the type that don't give a ****," she sings, with a caveat. "Saw me on the television, that's just the half / You saw the half of it / This is the life I live, and that's just the half of it." It's an introspective cap to an album that tightropes between fleeting youth and accepting responsibility, in matters both public and private.

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Rihanna’s Navy was at attention in New York City on Friday night when the pop princess held a listening party for her upcoming album, Unapologetic. Frenzied fans and industry stiffs brushed shoulders at the 40/40 Club as a steady stream of Ri’s biggest hits blared from the speakers and her latest video, "Diamonds," looped endlessly on plasma screens. "Let’s get those tweets going!" the DJ shouted, presumably unaware that patrons were asked to check their phones at the door to avoid leaks. Instead, guests brought canned foods, toiletries and other supplies for Hurricane Sandy victims in exchange for a preview of the album before it hits stores on November 19th.

The record opened with "Fresh Off The Runway," which finds Rihanna sing-rapping copious F-bombs over a mid-tempo frantic instrumental. She flirts with hip-hop stylings throughout much of the first act, pulling in the infamous trap rhythm and screwed vocal samples that have crawled from rap's drug-obsessed fringes to metropolitan clubs over the past few years. The influence of contemporary trapsters ASAP Rocky and Juicy J is particularly apparent on tracks like "Pour It Up," a rehash of the "Bandz Make Her Dance" instrumental over which Rihanna drips with strip-club cocksure: "All I see is signs, all I see is dollar signs," and to the haters: "I still got more money."

A few friends join the party too. Eminem spits some breakneck bars on the down-tempo, foghorn driven "Numb," and Future continues his brilliant transition from club king to autotuned crooner on "Loveeeee Song." "I don’t want to give you the wrong impression, I need love and affection," he duets with Rihanna over a 40-esque ooze-fest that may be the best track on the album. David Guetta laces "Right Now" with some warbling dubstep that got attendees excited, and at one point Rihanna interpolates Genuine’s "Pony" with spectacular, if not hilarious, results.

But of course, the feature that had fans chattering the most was Rihanna’s duet with Chris Brown, "Nobodies Business" – the crowd broke out in applause at the DJ’s mere mention of the title. "You’ll always be my boy, I’ll always be your girl," Rihanna sings over a two-step-friendly funk track. "And it ain’t nobody’s business but mine and my baby." Chris returns with words just as sweet: "Your love is infectious, let’s make out in this Lexus," he serenades. The two, on song at least, appear rigid in their ways, driven by a love that doesn’t seek permission or approval. In light of their troubled relationship, the sentiment may be difficult for some to bear, but it’s also an extremely honest depiction of young love, the kind of relationship that feels affirmed by just how complex and painful it is. It’s no coincidence the very next track finds her lamenting "you took the best years of my life, but what’s love without tragedy?"

Rihanna’s personal strife in the public eye hangs like a cloud over Unapologetic. Hooks like "Round and around we go, now tell me how you know" and "I don’t know where to go, I don’t know how to feel" paint a young girl confused and in limbo, steadfast in her opinions but not sure how yet to explain them when the whole world’s watching. On "Mother Mary" she vents, "I’m from the left side of an island, never thought this many people would know my name." It’s no wonder the singer has to roll a blunt or two to clear her head on "Get It Over With": "I’m wondering, wondering, why you keep thundering, won’t you just ****ing rain . . . let’s get it over with, get high and float again."

As the DJ started the album up a second time, Rihanna made a surprise appearance to swarms of fans and camera flashes, but didn’t address the crowd or mingle for too long. Her devotees didn't ask for any explanations – the music clearly said all they needed to hear.