Member Since: 1/1/2014
Posts: 28,137
|
Quote:
The intoxicating “Work” aside, Anti is the wooziest, thorniest, grouchiest, most insular and sensually malevolent record of her career: Music for Rihanna to Take Drugs to, Alone. Even the copious sex jams have a hostile, forlorn quality; she is the insatiable seductress from Prince’s “Little Red Corvette,” and nobody’s got anywhere near enough gas.
And so. She covers psych-pop shut-ins Tame Impala at great length and with profound depth of feeling. She purrs come-ons like, “Tryna fix your inner issues with a bad bitch / Didn’t they tell you that I was a savage? / **** your white horse and a carriage.” (Moreover: “Man, **** your pride.”) Drake aside, no other would-be conquering-hero rapper even makes the cut; Travis Scott gets to hoot a bit on the stabbing, jarring “Woo,” but otherwise you get the sense that he spent the entire recording process duct-taped to the ceiling. Meanwhile, the songs that initially seemed like throwaways grudgingly reveal themselves as the most profound. “Consideration,” a dazed, singsong duet with the R&B singer SZA, feels slight as an opener until you realize it’s a declaration of both independence and war: “I got to do things my own way, darling.” And “Higher,” the most striking track on first listen, only gets more so: a howling drunken-sext-as-torch-song with the rawest, craziest, and best vocals of her career.
Core Constituency: Misanthropist romantics; unromantic misandrists; lovelorn stoners; people who want to have sex with Rihanna, but are too terrified of her to even imagine it. (So, Drake.)
Album of the Year? If you’re feeling as contrarian as she is, sure. Anti will never open its arms to embrace you, but you might very well grow to love it; no full-length album better illustrates how irrelevant full-length, semi-conventionally released albums are to pop superstars in 2016. She has outgrown the form. She’s arguably better than that whole notion, and inarguably bigger; this is arguably her best album, and inarguably her least eager to please. Having cranked out seven of these suckers in eight years from 2005 to 2012, she’s practically post-content, post-music, post-human; in 2016, the mere sight of Rihanna walking through a crowded room is a solid AOTY candidate. This thing is a loss leader for her brand (and several other brands). If you still don’t like it even now, though, keep it to yourself, lest she ****ing increase the ****ing thing.
|
i'm cryin sisters
|
|
|
|
--she has the kind of voice that could do very well. She has a natural flow to her,
What an acclaimed queen 
