Rihanna "Rated R"

 

 

Rihanna – Rated R

Considering the year that Rihanna has had (Chris Brown etc) this album was bound to be scrutinised so much more than anything else she’s done before. But that’s how it goes when you’re one of the biggest pop stars in the world. So where do we start? How about at “I’m such a fuckin’ lady?” The line, which comes courtesy of Wait Your Turn, immediately shows a new side of Rihanna that we haven’t seen before; the good girl gone bad, but this time it’s for real.

It’s no surprise here that two of the best songs on the album come courtesy of The-Dream and Tricky Stewart who bring us Hard and Rockstar 101. On a sidenote, Rockstar 101 looks horrible on paper (it features Slash) but the results are actually pretty good. Instead of taking a front seat, Slash just sits back, strums a few power chords and let’s Ri Ri take on the role of the sex kitten (“I disobey the law/make sure you frisk me good, check my panties and my bra”). On Hard, which is possibly the highlight of the album, we get Rihanna shit-talking with all the bravado she can muster and depending how you look at it, it’s entertaining as hell. “While you’re gettin’ your cry on, I’m gettin’ my fly on,” she quips in the pre-chorus before handing over the reigns to Young Jeezy who delivers a substandard verse (with a quality delivery, as expected) along with a nice little dig at Gucci Mane.

 

But then there’s songs that just lag and after a few listens feel like filler. Stupid In Love has some interesting lyrics (“Never have I ever been a size 10 in my whole life”)  but ultimately sounds like places – I’m thinking Unfaithful – that we’ve visited before. Photographs take the most humane subject matter but then kills it with a cameo from will.i.am rapping about how he used to wear Calvin Klein, but that was the old him. I may be biased but the album probably could have done with more input from The-Dream, who is pretty much the go-to guy in R&B at the moment; plus he wrote Umbrella, so y’know, what could go wrong? Who knows, maybe the flop that was Mariah Carey’s new album put the record exec’s off. 

Firebomb has the potential to be a future single with it’s epic Brian Kennedy production which ends up being more anthemic with every listen. The Justin Timberlake assisted cut, Cold Case Love, stretches out the end of the album but it’s slightly understated much like Rehab was and it’d probably transform pretty nicely in her live show. As for Russian Roulette, well, that’s not even worth mentioning.

Rated R ultimately comes off as an album scared to push the envelope too far. So between all the really interesting tracks like Hard and Wait Your Turn, we get formulaic songs like G4L and Te Amo. Plus now we have Rihanna as she’s gone through this whole apocalyptic ice-queen transformation thing, which involves her semi-naked in her album inlay and even smoking in a few of the pictures. She’s all grown up and ready to leave her past behind – all she needs now are the songs to back her up.