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Fan Base: Rihanna
Member Since: 8/17/2013
Posts: 20,654
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amount of Stadiums Rihanna headlined throughout her career
Karaiskakis Stadium - Greek - Last Girl On Earth Tour (2010)
İnönü Stadium - Turkey - Diamonds World Tour (2013)
2x Stade De France - France - Diamonds + ANTI World Tour (2013 + 2016)
Principality Stadium - Wales - Diamonds World Tour (2013)
2x Twickenhamstadium - UK - Diamonds World Tour (2013)
Stadium Of Light - UK - Diamonds World Tour (2013)
2x Aviva Stadium - Ireland - Diamonds + ANTI World Tour (2013 + 2016)
2x Stade Pierre-Mauroy - France - Diamonds +ANTI World Tour (2013 + 2016)
FNB Stadium - Africa - Diamonds World Tour (2013)
Cape Town - Africa - Diamonds World Tour (2013)
du Arena - United Arab Emirates - Diamonds + ANTI World Tour (2013 + 2016)
2x Rose Bowl - North America - The Monster Tour (2014)
2x MetLife - North America - The Monster Tour (2014)
2x Comercia Park - North America - The Monster Tour (2014)
Amsterdam Arena - Netherlands - ANTI World Tour (2016)
Wembley Stadium - UK - ANTI World Tour (2016)
Ricoh Arena - UK - ANTI World Tour
Old Trafford - UK - ANTI World Tour (2016)
Hampden Park - Scotland - ANTI World Tour (2016)
Tele2 Arena - Sweden - ANTI World Tour (2016)
Volksparkstadion - Germany - ANTI World Tour (2016)
San Siro - Italy - ANTI World Tour (2016)
Commerzbank-Arena - Germany - ANTI World Tour (2016)
Stade des Lumières - Germany - ANTI World Tour (2016)
RheinEnergieStadion - Germany - ANTI World Tour (2016)
PGE Narodowy - Poland - ANTI World Tour (2016)
Olympiastadion - Germany - ANTI World Tour (2016)
Letzigrund - Switzerland - ANTI World Tour (2016)
37 Stadium shows at the age of 28 
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ATRL Contributor
Member Since: 10/8/2011
Posts: 32,133
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I really don't get why people in here turning Rih getting tested for HIV to raise awareness into a joke. Am I missing something?
That member had the nerve to question my intuition and saying I'm asking for Rih to get dragged. Yeah, because what Rih has done is worthy of dragging and to make fun of. I don't know how to feel about this. Mad? Sad? I know I shouldn't have paid any attention. I'm really disgusted.
I think I need a break from this place.
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Member Since: 1/6/2014
Posts: 6,767
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Quote:
Paste Magazine, 50 Best songs of 2016
#13 Kiss It Better
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Member Since: 1/6/2014
Posts: 6,767
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Member Since: 8/19/2013
Posts: 14,581
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Quote:
Originally posted by WeFoundWill
amount of Stadiums Rihanna headlined throughout her career
Karaiskakis Stadium - Greek - Last Girl On Earth Tour (2010)
İnönü Stadium - Turkey - Diamonds World Tour (2013)
2x Stade De France - France - Diamonds + ANTI World Tour (2013 + 2016)
Principality Stadium - Wales - Diamonds World Tour (2013)
2x Twickenhamstadium - UK - Diamonds World Tour (2013)
Stadium Of Light - UK - Diamonds World Tour (2013)
2x Aviva Stadium - Ireland - Diamonds + ANTI World Tour (2013 + 2016)
2x Stade Pierre-Mauroy - France - Diamonds +ANTI World Tour (2013 + 2016)
FNB Stadium - Africa - Diamonds World Tour (2013)
Cape Town - Africa - Diamonds World Tour (2013)
du Arena - United Arab Emirates - Diamonds + ANTI World Tour (2013 + 2016)
2x Rose Bowl - North America - The Monster Tour (2014)
2x MetLife - North America - The Monster Tour (2014)
2x Comercia Park - North America - The Monster Tour (2014)
Amsterdam Arena - Netherlands - ANTI World Tour (2016)
Wembley Stadium - UK - ANTI World Tour (2016)
Ricoh Arena - UK - ANTI World Tour
Old Trafford - UK - ANTI World Tour (2016)
Hampden Park - Scotland - ANTI World Tour (2016)
Tele2 Arena - Sweden - ANTI World Tour (2016)
Volksparkstadion - Germany - ANTI World Tour (2016)
San Siro - Italy - ANTI World Tour (2016)
Commerzbank-Arena - Germany - ANTI World Tour (2016)
Stade des Lumières - Germany - ANTI World Tour (2016)
RheinEnergieStadion - Germany - ANTI World Tour (2016)
PGE Narodowy - Poland - ANTI World Tour (2016)
Olympiastadion - Germany - ANTI World Tour (2016)
Letzigrund - Switzerland - ANTI World Tour (2016)
37 Stadium shows at the age of 28 |
I will never get why people come for Rih's touring stats. All because AWT wasn't 100% sold out meanwhile she's performed in stadiums most popstars don't even see before the age of 30.
Touring doesn't make or break an artists legacy imo:
On one hand you have someone like Bey who didn't become a touring force she is now until more than 15+ years into her career.
The other you have someone like Mariah who is without a doubt legendary but she's never been big with touring.
Adele truly is a rarity in the sense that she doesn't go on as many tours as most pop girls so when she does it should come to no surprise that her shows sell out quickly.
Plus Rih has expressed her mixed emotions about touring, she doesn't love it like Madonna or Bey which is why she doesn't opt for long drawn out ones.
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Member Since: 8/17/2013
Posts: 20,654
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Member Since: 8/17/2013
Posts: 20,654
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The reason why Rihanna isn't as big of a touring force as Beyonce, is due to her bad reputation.
Her always being late for her shows in-between 2010 and 2013 really effected her image.
I feel like the demand is there, but stuff like that really holds people back from purchasing tickets to her shows.
Also, her productions aren't anything to write home about. Rih's team needs to step it up, especially If she's going to do another Stadium leg on her next Tour.
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Member Since: 8/17/2013
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On the other hand, people really try it by calling this tour a failure.
She filled almost all the stadiums up to 90%.
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Member Since: 6/6/2011
Posts: 48,509
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Quote:
Originally posted by WeFoundWill
The reason why Rihanna isn't as big of a touring force as Beyonce, is due to her bad reputation.
Her always being late for her shows in-between 2010 and 2013 really effected her image.
I feel like the demand is there, but stuff like that really holds people back from purchasing tickets to her shows.
Also, her productions aren't anything to write home about. Rih's team needs to step it up, especially If she's going to do another Stadium leg on her next Tour.
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Yeah it's obvious. Bad reputation (she's been late this tour too) + poor production and staging, show too short. Othewise she could clearly pull BIG numbers, she has the name, the hits and enough talent. 
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Member Since: 8/19/2013
Posts: 14,581
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IDK what happened to Illumanted post about Rih on Year End lists but she also made
Paste Magazine #13 Kiss it Better
https://www.pastemagazine.com/articl...-2016.html?a=1
Sterogum #20
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Rihanna doesn’t give a ****. That’s long been a major part of her public persona, but ANTI is the first time it’s carried over to her actual music. There aren’t any world-conquering anthems on this thing. Instead of singles, there’s an album. Instead of bangers, there’s atmosphere. Instead of fireworks, she’s given us the dull ember of a big-ass blunt, and when the smoke clears, what’s left is that attitude, that voice, and Rihanna herself, a woman carrying a profound sense of loneliness and disappointment. Maybe she does give a **** after all. –Peter
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http://www.stereogum.com/featured/th...lbums-of-2016/
Crack Magazine #24
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In an online culture of piping-hot takes and quick turnarounds on album verdicts, it’s albums like ANTI which justify the end-of-year reflection period in music journalism. As we waited for Rihanna’s eighth record to be some kind of spectacle – a landmark release to celebrate a decade in the game – ANTI emerged low-key and unbothered. At a glance, it seemed uninteresting. Rihanna looked directionless, flitting between styles with no real bite. What felt like aimlessness, in retrospect, was emblematic of a blissful, drifting freedom. Months later and hidden shades and undertones are still being discovered in ANTI. The weightlessness of Work, the cold stare of Desperado and the triumphant glow of Kiss It Better. A career highlight from an artist who continues to elude classification.
Duncan Harrison
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http://crackmagazine.net/article/music/aoty16/?paging=8
Esquire #21
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Rihanna has no intentions of being anything we've come to expect from a pop star. She's not going to release safe music. She is not a role model for your kids. With Anti, she covers some insane ground: jazz, '80s-tinged pop, EDM, dancehall, and reggae. And in doing so, she's once again defied our expectations.
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http://www.esquire.com/entertainment...-albums-music/
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She's currently 25 on the aggregate list. http://www.albumoftheyear.org/list/summary/2016/
Whether she continues to move up or not this album has undoubtedly laid the foundation for future acclaim. In a weird way I like that critics don't kiss her ass just because, it shows that she really put in the hard work and dedication to get the praise she is getting for Anti. Job well done 
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Member Since: 4/5/2014
Posts: 3,523
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You all dragged me for saying the same thing during AWT and now you are begging her to step it up  .. K
DWT had huge demand because people changed their opinion on Rihanna with Diamonds Stay and all the performances she did for those songs.
But with DWT(lateness,lack of singing) and the "pre era" Work,lack of promo and even during the AWT itself(cheap production,lateness  )she got bad press again so the public'sconception of Rihanna as a performer went back to 2010-2013 levels again.
If she wants a successful touring career she has to maintain a high profile from now on instead of the hit or miss she's been giving
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Member Since: 8/19/2013
Posts: 14,581
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Ehhhh I agree to a certain extent.
Yes reputation has a lot to do with it but its also all about promotion.
Facts are:
Rihanna got much better reputation for her performance skills with AWT than DWT.
But DWT had a much better buildup/ promotion than AWT. ( She just came off the VMAs & Diamonds was starting to blowup. Oddly enough I feel she was more visible during DWT overseas.. she actually went out and did tourist things. Actually went to a few promo slots for interviews… all of which helped keep the tour/ her name in the press)
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Member Since: 1/1/2014
Posts: 28,137
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Era predicts tour success imo, I've always said this
DWT obviously had a more organized era predating it and she was overall more visible. It's okay to be chill/quiet/private (I'm truly thankful she's more under-the-radar now) but the era has to make up for that
While reputation plays a part, I think people would suck-it-up and attend if they felt the concert was a huge, must-see show. If the promo and organization isn't on point then they're obviously not going to feel that way
She could have the best stage-design ever and suddenly fix all of her problems with touring/performances but if people don't know or don't care they're not going to show up 
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Member Since: 5/27/2016
Posts: 1,966
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Quote:
Originally posted by BajanBeauty
IDK what happened to Illumanted post about Rih on Year End lists but she also made |
Yesterday, I deleted the previous post because I added many more and wanted to post it again, that's why I deleted the previous post and instead of submitting reply of the new one I accidentally closed the tab.  I am an idiot LOL
I will compile them again and post.
---
Iconic.
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ATRL Senior Member
Member Since: 1/6/2014
Posts: 8,787
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Member Since: 5/27/2016
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Ranked between #1-#15.
Rihanna - Anti
Pitchfork: The 20 Best Pop and R&B Albums of 2016
No ranks.
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Rihanna’s album was something of a mixed bag—Tame Impala cover? A ’50s style soul ballad? Travis Scott?—but it aged terrifically. On first listen, this was a headscratcher; on 500th listen, it was a wily collection of Rihanna’s modes, with clubby highs like “Work” and “Needed Me” surrounded by rawer, presumably higher, moments. An excellently modern jumble. –Matthew Schnipper
http://pitchfork.com/features/lists-...f-2016/?page=2
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Fuse: THE 20 BEST ALBUMS OF 2016
1.
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"I got to do things my own way darling / Will you ever let me? Will you ever respect me? No.”
The lyrics to “Consideration,” the opening track to ANTI, say it all. Throughout her immensely successful career, Rihanna has blessed us with infinite dance-pop smashes that had us grooving until our feet bled, collaborations with mainstream artists that kept her riding high on the charts, and team-ups with some of the biggest hitmakers of all time. But for ANTI, affectionally dubbed R8 by the Navy, the pop-icon-in-the-making threw that all away to make room for an album that officially solidified her as a true, bona fide artist.
It wasn’t an easy road to get there. We fans struggled through more than three years (the longest Rih has ever waited to drop an album) of messy promotions from her label, random singles that didn’t even make it to the final product, Instagram snippets that had us salivating for more, and even her saying it was coming “very soon” in interviews. But it was all worth it, because she gave us her most cohesive project to date. We thought Rihanna stepped out her comfort zone with 2009’s Rated R, but ANTI proved to be the more mature, in-control, risk-tasking sister that didn’t take **** from anyone.
ANTI swims in sounds we’ve never heard Rihanna explore before, remarkable notes that reflect how much she’s grown as a vocalist, and an all-encompassing celebration of the facets of her womanhood. “Higher” is a passionate, pleading voicemail that we’ve all sent to ex-lovers while drunk, “Love on the Brain” is a masterfully wounded ballad (and one of her best songs of all time), “Desperado” is a sinister Western romp, “Needed Me” is the ultimate savage kiss-off anthem, and “Same Ol’ Mistakes” is a psychedelic ride of euphoria. Anti is the full embodiment of Rihanna: dark, dangerous, slightly vulnerable, sensual and way more than your typical pop star. –Bianca Gracie
http://www.fuse.tv/2016/12/best-albu...he-year-2016#1
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BET: The Top 10 Albums of 2016
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Yes, ANTI is a clear reminder that badass pop princess Rihanna truly gives zero f**ks, but what made us fawn over her for the millionth time was the endless piles of risks she took with her long-awaited eighth album. There’s no dichotomy to plow through, no mythical veil to uncover. What you see is what you get and what we heard on wax is undeniably her most compelling work to date. Laying on a thick coat of cool rationality (“Woo,” “Consideration” ), her candid sexpot temperament (“Sex With Me,” “Kiss It Better”) and unexpected glimpses into her soul (“Needed Me,” “Same Ol' Mistakes"), the LP flourishes beyond the mainstream pop lane she’s owned for the past decade and into an alt-R&B zone where her once prosy vocals prove to be just as magnetic as her hazel gaze. In an industry where vulnerability still seems to be taboo, Rihanna took a chance and found her own musical masterpiece in escapism. – Ashley Monaé
http://www.bet.com/music/2016/12/05/...l?sf44936918=1
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Entertainment Weekly: The 50 best albums of 2016
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Call it The Emancipation of RiRi; after more than a decade churning out albums stacked with glossy mainstream bangers, pop’s clockwork Barbadian retreated for an unprecedented three-year incubation. And what emerged was ANTI: a dense collection of deep cuts that deliberately turned its cheek to the Hot 100 — yet still yielded “Work,” the longest-running No. 1 of her career. Nearly every moment here, from the dusky dubstep swagger of “Consideration” to the vintage-soul swoon “Love on the Brain,” feels like the liberated work of a superstar who decided finally, rightfully, that she could be an artist, too. —K.O.
http://www.ew.com/article/2016/12/08...st-albums-2016
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Idolator: The 10 Best Albums Of 2016
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It’s fitting that Rihanna called her eighth album Anti. Not only did she take three years to unleash the record, she also effectively chucked the “classic Ri banger” trope to the wind. (Though, I’d argue that the Drake-assisted “Work” and deluxe track “Sex With Me” are vastly underrated in that regard.) The result? Her most rebellious and experimental work to date. Clobbering numbers like “Woo” and “Needed Me” are met with dizzying ballads (“Higher”) and ’80s power jams (“Kiss It Better”). She even goes so far as to dabble in Aussie psychedelic rock, covering Tame Impala’s “Same Ol’ Mistakes” just for fun.
As Jenna Wortham once pointed out, “‘Anti is the record you make when you don’t need to sell records.” And it’s true – here we see an artist who stands sincerely, unwaveringly ****s-free. Consequently, it’s also the most powerful Rihanna’s ever been.— RACHEL SONIS
http://www.idolator.com/featured/bes...est-bruno-mars
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Noisey: The 100 Best Albums of 2016
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Consider this: within the first ten minutes of Rihanna's ANTI, we're treated to four songs (technically, three and an interlude) that could each be the centerpiece on any other album.
There's the sinister drums of "Consideration," the spacey textured keys of "James Joint," the pop zenith that is "Kiss It Better," and "Work," the single that launched a thousand riddims. It's objectively the best multiple song run of any album this year, and therein lies one of the album's strengths: it confidently shows its hand from the get-go. There were a lot of albums-as-narratives this year, every song delicately placed for structure. The charm of ANTI, then, is how it deals with love, hurt, and relationships; it all feels sonically messy, leaving us with songs that don't naturally ebb and flow from the next.
Several months prior to the album's release during the unveiling of its cover, famed designer Roy Nachum wrote regarding Rihanna and the title's meaning, "By continuing to follow her own instincts, her work strives to make an impact by doing the very antithesis of what the public expects." To Nachum's point, that's exactly what we expect from Rihanna, and why she's so beloved. Her casual disregard for the egos of the opposite sex are cause for celebration; her eclectic and constant image revisions result in her being treated like a semi-deity online, but her fortitude to veer towards whatever direction she fits makes her a hero.
Over the course of the album, though, she's comfortable playing the role of the very opposite—an antagonist, an agitator, and an aggressor who pushes to the center while everything else shrinks in her wake. "Woo" and "Needed Me" best capture this spirit; over the former's atonal guitar riffs and unstable bassline, she sings, " Bet she could never made you cry/ Cause the scars on your heart are still mine." Yet when she repeats, "I don't mean to really love ya," her conviction just barely masks words that sound like a heart that's suffered. While the latter colors her cold and callous remarking, "You was just another ***** on the hit list." The final quarter then slows to a crawl and follows a tug and pull of id and ego, hubris and humility as Rihanna wrestles through regret ("Same Ol Mistakes") heartache (Love On The Brain), desperation ("Higher," which features a hoarse yet rich vocal performance and her best to date), and surrender ("Close to You").
Most criticisms of ANTI have addressed its seemingly jarring pacing and unclear direction, referring to it as a front-loaded effort that hops betweens themes and convoluted emotions. But ANTI is meant to be free-wheeling and aimless, and anyway emotions typically aren't neat and almost never stable. There's no linear arc that can be traced, other than bouts of bygone memories and the feelings that still remain present. It's supposed to sound uneven. It's supposed to sound spotty. It's supposed to sound human. —Jabbari Weekes
https://noisey.vice.com/en_us/articl...albums-of-2016
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Digital Spy: 20 best albums of 2016
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We said: "'I come fluttering in from Neverland, time could never stop me'." It's the whopping great elephant in the room and Rihanna's addressed the whole, sorry Anti ****-up within the first line. There's no apology or "sorry" – this isn't a Justin Bieber comeback. Instead there's a promise. Rihanna's here to 'cover your **** in glitter and make it gold'."
http://www.digitalspy.com/music/feat...lbums-of-2016/
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Cosmopolitan: The 15 Best Albums of 2016
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Rihanna kept the Navy waiting for Anti for more than three years, basically an eternity after her impressive run of seven albums in eight years. It was worth the wait, obviously, and turned out to be her most musically varied project yet. She dipped into indie rock with a cover of Tame Impala’s “Same Ol’ Mistakes,” taught your mom about dancehall with “Work,” and pushed her voice to its formidable limits on the doo-wop ballad “Love on the Brain.” Anti didn’t produce as many smash hits as Rihanna’s used to, but it also found her challenging herself in ways she hasn’t before.
http://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertai...lbums-of-2016/
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Time: The Top 10 Best Albums
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Rihanna might be the most charismatic person on the planet, and Anti is her first album to recognize that said charisma is her greatest strength. The music within is all over the place: she moves from dancehall to stoned soul to grimy trap-pop to Tame Impala-style psych without blinking, relying on her force of personality to hold everything together. The result is an album that creates and ignores trends instead of chasing them. Rihanna’s stardom has been inarguable for a solid decade at this point; Anti is the first album that does her justice.
http://time.com/4577061/
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Blare: The 50 Best Albums Of 2016
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Complex: The 50 Best Albums of 2016
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If anyone pulled a big 180 this year, it was Rihanna. In the long, teasing wait for Rihanna’s eighth studio album, it was easy to get excited for another energy-filled, dance-floor-packing album, the sort that we’ve come to expect from the pop queen. Instead, Anti reimagined what Rihanna can do and what we should expect from her. The album is perfect bedroom pop, what you listen to while sprawled on your bed lamenting a lost love or fantasizing about a new one. Anti feels more complete than any of her previous albums, which often seemed like mere vehicles for No. 1 singles. Anti is the opposite of that (aside from “Work,” her collab with Drake). It’s an album that’s worth listening all the way through, for the deep cuts and unexpected moments; you don’t want to miss the excellent cover of Tame Impala’s “Same Ol’ Mistakes” or the whiskey-soaked, last-call anthem, “Higher.”
Vocally, she’s never sounded better, and the stoner vibe makes so much sense, it’s amazing it hadn’t arrived earlier. But don’t be worried about the lack of bops—the bonus track “Sex With Me” is one of the best pop songs of the year. I’ll fight anyone who disagrees. —Kerensa Cadenas
http://www.complex.com/music/2016/12...6/rihanna-anti
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The Times / The Sunday Times
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AOL Entertainment: The best albums of 2016
8.
FasterLouder: The 50 best albums of 2016
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We said: “ANTI is about feeling like a recluse, away from the outside world. Its only crowd-pleaser, the bubblegum stadium rock of ‘Kiss It Better’, is an instant classic – but otherwise, atmosphere rules over obvious hooks. As she confesses on ‘James Joint’, “I’d rather be smoking weed” – and that smoke seeps into everything. Moody alternative R&B dominates the album’s first half, and none of it’s built for the club. It’s as if the whole world is a bedroom with the curtains closed.”
http://fasterlouder.junkee.com/50-be...-2016/869258/2
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Billboard: 50 Best Albums of 2016
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The quintessential bad gal album, Rihanna’s eighth studio album Anti offered a series of blunt-induced and whiskey-soaked high notes. While she led the charge with the dancehall-infused, Drake-featuring earworm “Work," other heavy hitters like the anti-relationship anthem “Needed Me,” the sensual all-nighter “Kiss It Better” and the bedroom touchdown dance “Sex With Me” gave Riri’s predominantly pop catalog a new edge. — A.P.
http://www.billboard.com/photos/7597...itics-picks/41
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NPR: Best 50 Albums of 2016
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The cover art for Rihanna’s eighth and most captivatingly ambitious album depicts an innocently half-clothed girl child with a gold crown over her eyes, recalling a blindfold or a virtual-reality headset. The image complements a line that leaps out from “Consideration,” the first song on this musically sweeping non-linear journey to the center of our pop heroine’s mind. “I need you to please give my reflection a break from the face it’s seeing now,” Rihanna wails in patois over a cool, slightly dislocated beat. Often accused of being all persona, the Barbados-born globalist reminds us with this demand, and throughout this prismatic set, that each of us lives, now more than ever, within the mirror halls of our own self-projections. Anti shows Rihanna and her collaborators forging a new sound to suit the pixelated nature of 21st-century consciousness, in which new angles on reality emerge at every screen-led turn. Fusing together avant-R&B production, Caribbean grooves, rock stances, blues feeling and psychedelia’s heavily detailed haze, Anti’s songs connect an unmoored sense of self with drugs, with sex, and with celebrity. Rihanna challenges herself vocally throughout, touching on the pathos of the torch singer and the arrogance of the trap rapper, ultimately espousing a musical globalism whose natural home is cyberspace. Our most futuristic pop star fully owns the mood of today’s hip hop-driven mainstream on Anti: more avant-garde than anything happening in so-called “alternative” music, more true to the dislocated heart of multi-device driven existence than any other Top 40 artist’s grandest statement. - Ann Powers
http://apps.npr.org/best-music-2016/list/top-albums/
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Uproxx: The 20 Best Albums Of 2016
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In continuing with 2016’s weird habit of only letting an artist succeed on either commercial or critical level, Anti remains an underperforming record in most aspects. But talk to any critic who covers pop in 2016 and they will harp on one thing — how f*cking good and underrated Anti is. There are probably still plenty of people who haven’t listened to Rihanna’s eighth album all the way through. My only emotion toward them at this point is pity.
There is evidence of a struggle all over Anti. First, there’s the name, which was adopted from the initially-teased R8, then there’s the apparently-botched release of lead singles “Four Five Seconds” and “Bitch Better Have My Money” in 2015, neither of which made the album itself. Then, there’s the fact that Rihanna executive produced the album herself, and unlike any of her other records, that she has her own songwriting credit on every single track. Whatever it took for Rihanna to emerge, relatively unscathed with Anti, I hope she keeps it up for the rest of her career.
From late night burners like “Kiss It Better,” heartsick devotion anthems like “Love On The Brain” and salty, loving drunk dial ballads like “Higher,” this is Rihanna’s most romantic album to date. Which doesn’t stop it from stomping on dudes without remorse on “Yeah, I Said It” and “Needed Me,” or getting fully introspective and personal on the Tame Impala cover “Same Ol’ Mistakes.” There’s a Tame Impala cover on here, that alone should let you know that for the first time, Rihanna has taken the reigns. Though this is Rihanna’s first album not to produce the kind of chart-toppers she’s traditionally enjoyed, there is a much deeper, richer sense of accomplishment at work here. This sounds like Rihanna’s first real labor of love — and the feeling shows.—C.W.
http://uproxx.com/music/best-albums-2016/2/
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Spin: 50 Best Albums of 2016
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Badgal Riri never exactly clarified what she was rebelling against, but the long-anticipated album known informally as #R8—her eighth—makes it pretty clear. In an effort to progress as an artist, something she’s always sought to do and not often given credit for, ANTI is an almost wholesale rejection of pop trends and cliché retreads of basic moneymakers—though, in that sense, it is a part of a different 2016 trend in which black women pop stars were at their most self-generating and creative. Even “Work,” the Drake-assisted smash that surely motored along thanks to their dating narrative, was exactly the opposite of the softbatch quasi-dancehall-lite on pop radio: It was, simply, a song about a West Indian woman wining on a dude she knew was beneath her.
But more than any of that, ANTI was a showcase for the IRL work Rihanna had most certainly been doing with a vocal coach: This chick can sang—”Love on the Brain”!—as stops on the ANTI World Tour confirmed. It was a repudiation of every bit of slander she’d gotten since 2012’s Unapologetic, and a revalidation that she is on her own time, never offering what you what you expected by always giving you what you need; in this case, a stoner doing contemporary torch songs in the club. — JULIANNE ESCOBEDO SHEPHERD
http://www.spin.com/featured/the-50-...lbums-of-2016/
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Fact: 50 Best Albums of 2016
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The accepted narrative is that Anti’s gestation was a tortuous one. Between 2005 and 2012, Rihanna released seven albums in eight years (or eight albums if you count 2008's Good Girl Gone Bad: Reloaded, the reissue of the album that made her a megastar). And then… nothing. As generations of songwriters perished in Roc Nation battery farms for her, Badgalriri seemed content blessing us with her presence on Instagram rather than iTunes. Inevitably, when Anti arrived it sounded – just like every Rihanna album since Rated R – like it was thrown together in a fortnight anyway. And, also like every Rihanna album since Rated R, it was a hotchpotch of half-baked ideas (covering a Tame Impala song note for note, the ill-advised eardrum-shattering vocal on ‘Higher’) and pop of irresistibly blasé brilliance. Three-quarters of ‘Work’ is the banger of the year, Rihanna slipping and sliding across a pulsing dancehall riddim (shame about Drake's verse), and ‘Consideration’ is a sour, snappy declaration of restlessness. Best of all, though, is the magnificently cutting poetry of ‘Needed Me’, the perfect dismissive riposte to boys who mistake spilling their tedious emotions for profundity. AM
http://www.factmag.com/2016/12/13/best-albums-of-2016/
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The 405: Top 30 Albums of 2016
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Tiny Mix Tapes: Favorite 50 Music Releases of 2016
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Maybe it’s nonsense to call one of the most famous singers of all time underappreciated, but here we are: in a year flooded with bar-raising R&B albums, Rihanna’s ANTI was possibly the least appreciated for what it brought to the table. Often chillingly skeletal, at other times wildly overheated (see: those awesome Prince-worshipping lead lines on “Kiss It Better”), Rihanna was all over the map here, and in this roaming, she grabbed more room to experiment and invent than ever before. The result is her first great album, a messy, intense, strange, murky, imperfect, brilliant record that, like a millennial pop Kid A, dismantled its own genre while remaining stadium-size accessible. Hazy and full of detours, this was the document of a hugely visible artist wrestling with her own voice and carving out enough space within it to reassert her identity. Like a 3 AM call from that one friend who hasn’t been around for a while but always knows where the real trouble is, ANTI lingered behind as a memorable, intimate journey to the end of the night (Tame Impala karaoke included). –DYLAN PASTURE
http://www.tinymixtapes.com/features...eleases?page=3
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Independent: Best albums of 2016
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Anti was the moment Rihanna finally asserted herself as an album artist, after reigning as queen of the singles charts for so many years.
Becoming bored with pop music, she took a week’s hiatus (it was supposed to be a year) before heading into the studio and producing her eighth, long-awaited EP.
The build-up to this was ridiculous – there were three singles that didn't actually make it onto the album, teasing social media account – but the arrival of the record itself seemed remarkably low-key.
On Anti you can hear how she moves away from pop and towards a more reflective R&B sound – and there's a braveness to all of this as though, while she hasn't quite worked out who she wants to be as an artist; she's definitely worked out who she isn't.
Best tracks: Consideration, Love On The Brain, Desperado, Needed Me
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-e...-a7446336.html
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Member Since: 5/27/2016
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Ranked between #16-#40.
Pretty Much Amazing: 60 Best Albums of 2016
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2016 was the year when all of our brightest young pop stars — Kanye, Beyonce, Frank — toyed with our expectations and then threw them right out the window. But the first person to do it, arguably the trendsetter, was Rihanna. Since the advent of Beyonce, many of pop’s leading lights have been trying to be full-album auteurs — Anti shows that Rihanna can craft a 40-minute-plus vision as good as any of them. The prevailing theme? Rihanna doing whatever the hell she wants. Whatever we were expecting from Rihanna’s long-gestating eighth album, Anti probably wasn’t it. Where previous Rihanna tracks and albums were polished, melodic, and dangerous in measured doses, Anti is brash, confounding, and messy — an LP-length kiss-off. It’s to her credit (and let’s be honest, her genius) that the album minted a handful of dynamite hit singles anyways — from the dancehall burner “Work” to the Harmony Korine-influenced “Needed Me” to the latest entry in the bonus track hall-of-fame, “Sex With Me”. Rihanna is all over the map on Anti – psychedelic pop covers, doo-wop throwbacks, alienating skronk-pop, and a healthy dose of heartrending balladry thrown in for good measure. It’s remarkably confusing and unfailingly compelling. Anti is an addled, scattershot journey through the mind of one of contemporary pop’s preeminent provocateurs. We may have no idea where she’s going next, but until we find out, we have Anti, a career-best record as chaotic as the pop star and the year that birthed it. — Zach Bernstein
http://prettymuchamazing.com/features/best-albums-2016
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Pitchfork: 50 Best Albums of 2016
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After seven LPs, Rihanna finally made a great album, rather than a collection of zeitgeist-dominating bangers surrounded by filler. What makes ANTI work (work work work work) is the presence of Rih’s no-****s-given (but secretly a few ****s given) attitude in every crack and corner. Her stoner queen comes out in “James Joint,” an all-too-brief gem of Stevie Wonder warmth. The savage boss she perfected in “Bitch Better Have My Money” (and across social media) comes full force on “Needed Me,” the quintessential “Oh, you caught feels?” anthem. It’s only as ANTI continues that Ms. Fenty realizes maybe no woman is an island, no matter how many platinum records she racks up, diamond ball gowns she wears, or skull-sized blunts she smokes. By the time we get to old-school piano ballad “Higher,” Rihanna raspily belts out what is essentially a drunk voicemail to a man she has to admit she still thinks about. Whoever he is, he doesn’t deserve her. –Jillian Mapes
http://pitchfork.com/features/lists-...f-2016/?page=4
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Stereogum: The 50 Best Albums Of 2016
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Rihanna doesn’t give a ****. That’s long been a major part of her public persona, but ANTI is the first time it’s carried over to her actual music. There aren’t any world-conquering anthems on this thing. Instead of singles, there’s an album. Instead of bangers, there’s atmosphere. Instead of fireworks, she’s given us the dull ember of a big-ass blunt, and when the smoke clears, what’s left is that attitude, that voice, and Rihanna herself, a woman carrying a profound sense of loneliness and disappointment. Maybe she does give a **** after all. –Peter
http://www.stereogum.com/featured/th...lbums-of-2016/
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Esquire: The 30 Best Albums of 2016
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Rihanna has no intentions of being anything we've come to expect from a pop star. She's not going to release safe music. She is not a role model for your kids. With Anti, she covers some insane ground: jazz, '80s-tinged pop, EDM, dancehall, and reggae. And in doing so, she's once again defied our expectations.
http://www.esquire.com/entertainment...-albums-music/
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Dummy: 25 Best Albums of 2016
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Rihanna really went left with her eighth studio album and it pays off in abundance. It's sexy as hell, crossing the borders between trap, dancehall and R&B, to take the listener through the motions with seduction and beauty and, dare I say, defiance. Rest assured, we’ve seen a new Rihanna in 2016. Yemi Abiade
http://www.dummymag.com/lists/the-25...albums-of-2016
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Crack Magazine: Albums 2016
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In an online culture of piping-hot takes and quick turnarounds on album verdicts, it’s albums like ANTI which justify the end-of-year reflection period in music journalism. As we waited for Rihanna’s eighth record to be some kind of spectacle – a landmark release to celebrate a decade in the game – ANTI emerged low-key and unbothered. At a glance, it seemed uninteresting. Rihanna looked directionless, flitting between styles with no real bite. What felt like aimlessness, in retrospect, was emblematic of a blissful, drifting freedom. Months later and hidden shades and undertones are still being discovered in ANTI. The weightlessness of Work, the cold stare of Desperado and the triumphant glow of Kiss It Better. A career highlight from an artist who continues to elude classification.
-Duncan Harrison
http://crackmagazine.net/article/music/aoty16/?paging=8
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Rolling Stone: 50 Best Albums of 2016
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Rihanna's long-simmering eighth album brought together stinging songs that showcased the pop provocateur's ever-widening range, both stylistically and vocally. She channeled late-night loneliness and regret-tinged isolation on clamorous club arguments ("Woo") and faithful covers of Aussie indie-psych ("Same Ol' Mistakes") alike, creating a stark tableau on which she could work out grievances with those who have disappointed her. There are quite a few: The sinewy, dancehall-inspired "Work" is a parry toward a guy (portrayed by frequent foil Drake) who only wanted to connect physically; while the DJ Mustard-produced "Needed Me" is a biting kiss-off to a lover whose flights of romantic fancy proved to be too much. Her torch song "Love on the Brain" proves that she isn't totally immune to heartache, with an all-in performance that only strengthens the song's hurts-so-good imagery. M.J.
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/li...a-anti-w451269
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For The Win: The 50 best albums of 2016
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ANTI got buried this year in a way, both because of its release timing (January feels like a lifetime ago) and because of the odd way it was released. That’s silly: The album is probably Rihanna’s finest, a strong statement of independence with songs that expand beyond the dancehall. Plus, we’ll always have the Work video, and no matter how this album was released or how it’s remembered, no one can take that from us.
http://ftw.usatoday.com/2016/12/the-...albums-of-2016
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LA Music Blog: Top 50 Albums of 2016
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When it comes to making ear candy, Rihanna is an expert confectioner. Her latest album, ANTI, combines her charisma, charm, and femme power into one loosely packed album full of ballads and sprinkled with chart-toppers. This unusual departure from Rihanna’s usual aim to make every track a number one hit points to her evolution as an artist over her decade-long career.
Perhaps producing a subdued album wasn’t the initial plan, but it happened, and it’s refreshing. Tracks like “Desperado” and “Needed Me” force longtime Rihanna fans to sit back and listen to the seriousness of her sound and artistry. Anti squarely points to this developing maturity, as it coolly and effortlessly reminds the listener that Rihanna can still surprise us. At this point, she has nothing to prove, and she knows it. – Christine Perez
Listen: “Desperado”
http://lamusicblog.com/2016/12/news/...ums-of-2016/2/
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Variance: 50 Best Albums of 2016
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The road to Anti might have been a windy one, but after building a hefty career by conquering the pop charts with one massive single after another, Rihanna showed us she’s feeling a new level of confidence in her own artistry. Thus, she put out a truly rich, well-crafted album not dependent on one song. Time will tell what it means for the singer long-term, but it certainly seemed like the end of an old, rusty chapter and the beginning of a new, clear-eyed one.
http://variancemagazine.com/features...st-albums-2016
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PopMatters: 70 Best Albums of 2016
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Freed from a record contract with Def Jam, the first thing Rihanna dropped was “FourFiveSeconds”, hinting to some that she wasn’t quite ready to give up on mediocre pop. To be fair, she’s an alarmingly decent M.O.R. recording artist with an impressive 14 number one singles to her name. Anti added another to that roster in “Work”, her chart-busting collaboration with Drake, but it was the surrounding album that represented perhaps her greatest achievement to date. Immediately more loose than her most recent club-driven work, Anti finds Rihanna embracing silky, dark pop, taking cues from contemporaries as disparate as Sky Ferriera, Beyoncé, and FKA Twigs. Her voice, always best-suited in the mid-range, now doesn’t feel jailed there, but liberated to navigate within its sweet spot. It’s no libel to say she sounds perpetually stoned across the LP, slurring her words with an almost Young Thug-ian mumblecore delight, each line a smooth vaporous slide into the next. Even more impressive is the LP’s production, assembled by a hodgepodge of some of the best talent making the rounds these days. This is an album where the industrial vamps of “Woo” can run up against the electro-swagger of “Consideration”, the nostalgic soulful balladry of “Love on the Brain”, the lush neo-soul of “James Joint”, and fairly straight-up cover of Tame Impala on “Same Ol’ Mistakes” and comfortably feel cohesive and infinitely replayable.—Timothy Gabriele
http://www.popmatters.com/feature/th...ms-of-2016/P3/
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Les Inrocks: 50 Best Albums of 2016
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NME: Albums Of The Year 2016
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“Let me cover your **** in glitter/I could make it gold,” went ‘Anti”s SZA-featuring opener ‘Consideration’. Despite being one of the biggest popstars on the planet, with her 8th album, Rihanna proved that she wasn’t afraid of being a little weird, a little odd, a little grubby. Sure, there were bangers – ‘Work’ and ‘Kiss It Better’ for starters – but this was also a chance for her to let her freak flag fly, with low-key, spacious R&B, and moody, psychedelic funk.
http://www.nme.com/list/nme-best-albums-2016-1869261
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wow the OP looks gorgeous!!!!!!
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Member Since: 8/19/2013
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Those two posts. The back to back slayage... beautiful 
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ATRL Contributor
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