Originally posted by rihannar0x8
Reviews:
NY Times
“Loud” (Def Jam)
It’s back to business as usual — flirting, titillating, indulging, romancing — for Rihanna on her fifth album, “Loud.” She’s resuming her persona as the party girl with the glint of danger.
Rihanna’s 2009 “Rated R,” on which she shared some songwriting credit, followed the domestic violence inflicted by Chris Brown with hefty, portentous songs that insisted on her toughness and pride. For most of “Loud” she keeps trauma at a distance. The songs, all written for her, are about hookups, breakups and adult pleasures, and they are set in the synthetic virtual world of radio-ready pop. Rihanna is clearly aware of competition from Lady Gaga, the Black Eyed Peas and Kesha, and she’s keeping pace. Even through Auto-Tune, her voice holds its tangy individuality.
“Loud” proffers risqué good times from the beginning. The album starts with “S & M,” a bouncy, enthusiastic endorsement of “chains and whips” that rides a four-on-the-floor club beat (and later the hook from the Cure’s “Let’s Go to Bed”). The arena-rock-paced “Cheers (Drink to That),” with a sampled Avril Lavigne cheering, “Yeah! Yeah!,” is calculated for barroom singalongs.
Rihanna shares the mechanized, chattering beat of “Raining Men” with Nicki Minaj, singing and rapping about an endless supply of available men. Her own moans and heavy breathing surround her in the slow, torrid buildup of “Skin.” And she plays up her West Indian accent in the electro-reggae of “Man Down,” about shooting a lover in a moment of passion, and in “What’s My Name,” in which she responds wholeheartedly to come-ons from Drake.
The beat and the expertise persist through rougher emotional terrain. “Complicated,” a Tricky Stewart song about a romance full of mood swings, has Rihanna trumpeting her frustrations to the dance floor, over synthesizer beats ricocheting through space, a pumping house beat and crackling outbursts of percussion. The Polow Da Don production of “Fading” strategizes with long and short elements — sustained choruses and staccato verses, edgeless keyboard chords and notes that are suddenly truncated — to capture the ambivalence of a failing romance.
“Loud” works the pop gizmos as neatly as any album this year, maintaining the Rihanna brand. But the album has a hermetic, cool calculation until it gets to “Love the Way You Lie (Part II),” her take on the tortured hit she shared with Eminem. “It’s sick that all these battles are what keeps me satisfied,” she sings. A lone piano humanizes her first vocals, and she rides the ascending power ballad to a pained resolve; then Eminem delivers new verses in a spiraling rage. It’s purely theatrical, but it’s also, for a moment, raw. JON PARELES
NY Daily News
What a difference a year makes. Rihanna has gone from being the world's most famous battered woman, hellbent on revenge, to a reborn good-time girl, primed to party hard.
Rihanna's new disk is a thrilling refutation of her previous "Rated R." Where that disk brooded with dark rhythms and dire pronouncements, "Loud" flirts and struts with joy. In every way that "R" sounded forced and self-conscious, the new one seems effortless and free.
"Loud" might as well have been called "Fast," not only because of its brisk gestation period -- just six months, between legs of a long tour -- but also for its pace. Nearly every track hits the dance floor with a vengeance, starting with the single "Only Girl (In the World)." It's Rihanna's most carbonated club song since "Please Don't (Stop the Music)."
Her most steadfast producers -- the Stargate team -- dominate the proceedings and deserve to. One of their cuts, "What's My Name," pivots on a chemistry between Rihanna and Drake that's fiery enough to set off rumors. Rihanna pairs just as well with Nicki Minaj, on a complete tear-down on the old Weather Girls disco standard "It's Raining Men." Here it's not a gay song of lust but a statement of assurance that no man should incite too much worry, considering their sheer numbers.
Like many new songs, it revives Rihanna's Caribbean patois, a good thing. The deadening metal of the last album flattened that accent. This time, the bounce of the beats greatly encourages it.
Crucially, Rihanna also changed the focus of her sex songs. While the ones on "Rated R" presented her S&M tendencies as a threat, here they're a tease. There's even a sequel to her hit with Eminem ("Love the Way You Lie Part II"), which finds her underscoring her attachment to abusive men.
There's a definitive edge to that admission. But the true triumph of "Loud" arrives in the way it trades pain for pleasure, doing Rihanna's claim on pop dominance a real service in the process.
4/5 Stars
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