| |
Celeb News: 'Talk That Talk' reviews
Member Since: 1/4/2011
Posts: 5,030
|
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 3/3/2011
Posts: 23,567
|
Quote:
Originally posted by DG1
SPIN Magazine - "Talk That Talk" Review
With Aubrey "Drake" Graham ushering in a new era of complicated, emotion-drenched man-swag, it's only natural for Rihanna — the woman he claims once broke his heart — to emerge as his inverse, a tough-skinned, roost-ruling power lover. Stuffing her music with subversive sexuality and straight-up freakiness, she simultaneously puts up a wall, brassily challenges suitors to please her, and assumes they'll fail. On Talk That Talk's "Roc Me Out," she coyly dares a dude to sex her up, but then hits him with the punch line: "I'll let you in on a dirty secret / I just wanna be loved." From another artist, this might be a song about self-doubt. From Rihanna, it's like she's willfully withholding faith and throwing it back just to tantalize. The Jay-Z reference (and collabo!) does not go unnoticed.
The occasionally perfect pop on Talk That Talk softens the concept. Where last year's Loud had a hefty helping of unshakable singles, this album's arc, however simple — sex, love, sex, repeat — is cohesive and sweet. And for someone whose persona is so "bad-girl rock star," Rihanna sure loves techno music. Of all the dubstep-savvy starlets rolling out recently, she was the first by several years (2009's underrated Rated R), and this album doesn't skimp on 4 A.M. synths: "Where Have You Been" is tailor-made for a Coachella pool rave, while "Birthday Cake" and the Bangladesh-produced "Cockiness (Love It)" deliver elated, global-bass super-boom.
Even the requisite tinny StarGate ballad, a grandiose reinterpretation of the xx's "Intro," is doused with lusty passion, analogizing love to liquor. Still, it's alpha-chick sexual power that wins out; as she sings on the lush highlight "Watch and Learn": "If you learn how / I'll stay." It's Rihanna's game and there's very little chance you'll win — but she'd love it if you tried.
RATING: 8/10=80/100
http://www.spin.com/reviews/rihanna-talk-talk-def-jam
|
I'm glad they picked up on one of the lines that might save the album from being a tragic conflict between cheap sex and love.
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 1/8/2011
Posts: 6,941
|
Who the **** cares about reviews... they are so irrelevant...
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 8/29/2011
Posts: 9,504
|
yasssss so we have two 80s and a 70 that still need to be added 
|
|
|
|
Banned
Member Since: 10/13/2008
Posts: 20,553
|
Will move up to a 63 once the other scores are added.
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 9/21/2010
Posts: 29,122
|
Why is The Independent counted twice?
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 6/1/2010
Posts: 65,177
|
Quote:
Originally posted by Deemy
Why is The Independent counted twice?
|
Two different reviewers
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 3/5/2011
Posts: 30,130
|
Quote:
Originally posted by Ri_Ri_Rock
Who the **** cares about reviews... they are so irrelevant...
|
Yet two years ago when Rated R scored 76 but flopped commercially that's all the Navy clung to.
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 8/29/2011
Posts: 9,504
|
Quote:
Originally posted by Cap10Planet
Two different reviewers
|
neither of whom could be bothered to write more than a single paragraph. I die.
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 4/13/2011
Posts: 8,569
|
Are Billboard going to publish another review? Other than that track by track walkthrough?
Because I thought their publications counted for Metacritic. It seemed fairly positive.
Quote:
|
Originally posted by Billboard
Because, as a few listens of "Talk That Talk" proves, Rihanna just won't let her reign let up.
|
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 7/9/2010
Posts: 31,471
|
Quote:
Originally posted by Ri_Ri_Rock
Who the **** cares about reviews... they are so irrelevant...
|
Yeah, that's why you're in this thread
But I'm happy that Ri is increasing in reviews. 
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 9/12/2011
Posts: 18,018
|
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 9/13/2011
Posts: 7,912
|
Quote:
Originally posted by Peep Show
As someone mentioned before you'd co-sign every negative thing people say about Rihanna, just give it up already we know you dislike her, stop spending your time in this thread and move on.
|
I don't cosign every negative comment about Rihanna, if that was the case this wouldn't be my second comment in this thread. 
Also just bcuz someone doesn't praise Rihanna to the highest mountain doesnt mean their comments are negative.
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 7/13/2004
Posts: 12,079
|
Quote:
Originally posted by Sammi
For me: RR>GGGB>TTT>AGLM>MOTS
|
TTT>AGLM>MOTS>RR=GGGB>LOUD
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 3/3/2011
Posts: 23,567
|
Quote:
Originally posted by -Derek
TTT>AGLM>MOTS>RR=GGGB>LOUD
|
You didn't. 
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 9/11/2010
Posts: 10,985
|
RR just a tiny tiny tiny bit > TTT > GGGB > Loud > AGLM > MOTS
I can never decide between TTT and Rated R, but Firebomb kind of swayed me.
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 5/4/2011
Posts: 20,807
|
Quote:
Originally posted by Blueberry Kisses
RR just a tiny tiny tiny bit > TTT > GGGB > Loud > AGLM > MOTS
I can never decide between TTT and Rated R, but Firebomb kind of swayed me. |
That's my ranking, too, although RR is in front without the "tiny tiny bit".
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 1/7/2011
Posts: 3,816
|
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 10/29/2010
Posts: 29,249
|
The Oninon (A. V. Club) - "Talk That Talk" Review:
By Tuyet Nguyen November 22, 2011
There’s a Maria Bamford joke about success and how to maintain it: “Make a million dollars, and then just ****ing coast.” That’s where Rihanna is with Talk That Talk, her sixth studio album in six years. The record has already generated a Top 10 single (the Calvin Harris-helmed “We Found Love”), and will surely crank out a few more. Talk The Talk hits on all the obvious points. It’s a pop/R&B crossover with commercial dance-club appeal that simultaneously plays up Rihanna’s aggressive sexuality and her Juliet-in-waiting naïveté. She goes from the sweetly rapturous “You Da One” to the raunchy verses of “Suck my cockiness / Lick my persuasion” on the Bangladesh-produced “Cockiness (Love It)”—all the while maintaining her stony, deadpanned vocal delivery. Add in an obligatory Jay-Z cameo on the title track and a sparingly used dancehall-inflection throughout. It seems erratic, but it somehow works, at least musically.
Lyrically, Talk That Talk veers much too close to melodramatic prattle. The succession of song titles like “We Found Love,” “We All Want Love,” and “Drunk On Love” make for shallow generalities that would belie any real emotion. By the time Rihanna coos, “I’ll let you in on a dirty secret / I just want to be loved,” on the third-to-last track, “Roc Me Out,” it’s almost laughable. But Rihanna is a performer, not a songwriter. What she sings is less relevant than what she sells: a provocation that is enough to seem empowering, but not so radical that it’s alienating. Talk That Talk is a nearly perfect album for Rihanna—even more so, really, for her gainfully employed, carefully picked production team.
http://www.avclub.com/articles/rihan...club_rss_daily
RATING: B- = 67/100
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 10/29/2010
Posts: 29,249
|
DJ BOOTH - "Talk That Talk" Review:
From bubbly island pop princess to R-rated bondage queen to her current lighter incarnation, Rihanna’s gone through styles the way Ol’ Dirty Bastard went through baby mommas. No sooner has one delivered than she’s onto the next. Impressively, none of these phases have felt overly forced or strained. From S.O.S. to Umbrella to S&M, she’s pulled off each musical costume change with remarkable success. It’s not so much that she’s versatile, exactly, it’s that she’s a musical chameleon, able to perfectly blend in to whatever environment she’s placed. Or perhaps, since it’s hard to get a grasp on just who Rihanna inherently is as an artist, it’d be more apt to call her a blank slate through which any style can be channeled. Her voice isn’t particularly extraordinary or powerful by any traditional measure, but she always still sounds, at the very least, good. Her chorus on All of the Lights isn’t as epic as you’d think Kanye would have wanted, but it somehow still sounds good. Her work on Eminem’s Love the Way You Lie can’t match Em for emotional intensity, but it still sounds good. And when she needs to sound like a sexy girl next door for Drake on Take Care she sounds, you guessed it, pretty good.
It’s no wonder then than that her new album, Talk That Talk, is both a sharp departure from her dark, rock-infused last two albums Rated R and Loud and a more easily enjoyable work. As Rihanna said, just like her idol Madonna, she wants to reinvent her “clothing style and music with success every single time.” Mission accomplished. If Rated R was whips and handcuffs Talk That Talk is a glass of good wine and a sturdy bed. If Loud was a late night booty call, Talk That Talk is romantic rendezvous among long time lovers.
The last we heard from Rihanna, the last track on Loud, was Love The Way You Lie II, a relentlessly dark offering that delved deep into domestic violence, and by proxy her abusive relationship with Chris Brown. What a difference an album makes. The first we hear from Rihanna on Talk the Talk is the relentlessly upbeat You Da One, an uncomplicated, windows down in the summer cut that takes high school ideas of romance and layers in bouncing percussion and catchy melodies. In other words, it’s purely enjoyable pop. Title track Talk That Talk would on the surface appear to up the hip-hop ante, it does brings in Jay-Z for a (pretty mediocre by his standards) verse, but although slightly more club oriented and adult, it’s essentially pop as well. And We Found Love, which continues her new found romantic streak, uses the Euro-house sound that’s currently dominating the airwaves to instantly head-nodding effect. Pop by its definition has no real sound beyond what most people happen to be enjoying at the time, and Talk That Talk’s catering to pop sensibilities should be seen not as a sign of weakness but as a sign of strength. Rihanna is, once again, R&B’s biggest pop star.
That doesn’t mean, though, that Rihanna’s completely put aside her love of explicit sex – her idol is Madonna after all. But Loud’s nods to hardcore sex and ****ography (S&M) are replaced on Talk with some more tongue in cheek (or tongue in some other places) sexuality that’s still enough to earn some disapproving looks from parents. Even the sugary You Da One contains a reference to “hitting it like that”, but by far the album’s most explicit offering is Cockiness (Love It). Over a sparse beat you can expect every rapper alive to “freestyle” over soon, Rihanna relies almost entirely on her considerable charisma to carry the track, and succeeds. The clapping Birthday Cake is shorter, call it a quickie, but it’s just as sultry and playful, with Ri Ri promising her man she’s going to make him “her b*tch.” Hey, if you’re going to get a Parental Advisory sticker you might as well earn it.
Although I’m sure some critics will find fault in the album’s relative simplicity, where Talk That Talk actually falters is when it tries to get complicated. You can just hear the “hey, a more rock track is our best shot at a number one” planning behind the flatly generic We All Want Love, and on Farewell any trace of originality is gone. True to form though these songs still aren’t bad, they’re just not good in any meaningful way. That’s what Talk That Talk ultimately is in though; Rihanna’s declaration that she’s so firmly entrenched in super stardom that she doesn’t have to always push boundaries. Frankly, she’s right.
RATING: 3.5/5=70/100
http://www.djbooth.net/index/albums/...talk-11211101/
|
|
|
|
|
|
