PART 1: ARTIST NOTES
It's typically hard to gauge the legacy of an artist that's only been in the business under 10 years; even more so for an admittedly YOUNG one. However in contrast to the young and unbalanced discographies of Katy Perry and Lady Gaga (our subject's most contemporary and relevant competitors), Rihanna's discography has reached such a place that it's easy to evaluate her artistic merit from the overwhelming number of hits, singles, collaborations and albums under her belt. Whereas evaluating a Katy Perry or Lady Gaga generally concludes itself as a "wait and see" preface, with Rihanna I finally have a handle on where she sees herself, where she stands currently as a big piece of pop capital, and what her unique brand of music is.
Rihanna seems to gravitate evenly between urban R&B/hip-hop that's defined her record label, with more risky avante-garde pop songs that may or may not invoke some of her Island vocal delivery. On the one hand, her overly saturated discography muddled with (cheap) collaborations with prominent rappers shows that she and her team are hell bent on keeping her SOUND present in the listeners' ears. It's a side of Rihanna that I was never a fan of, and it always showed me that she was more willing to slap a verse onto a famous person's song as often as she could rather than focus mostly on defining her own sound. She's a savvy business woman for sure, and understands the superficiality of radio pop and the fickleness of standards its listeners share. Whether that makes her a genius or a PART of the problem is simply a matter of opinion.
PART 2: WHERE UNAPOLOGETIC STANDS
With her last four albums, Rihanna's showed a balance of R&B/hip-hop and pop that's helped sustain her credentials in the hip hop community while also smashing records and overtaking radio in an almost surreal fashion. It's hard to tell whether people gravitate to Rihanna songs because of her name, or because she's managed to have a genius song selection. Whatever the case may be, Rihanna has had an issue with keeping the balance of pop and R&B cohesive and natural in her albums, which sound more like LPs than single, unified projects (the exception, of course, being LOUD). Perhaps this makes her the most contemporary and realistic definition of a pop star; someone who puts a collection of good songs into one album for an easy sale, and slaps on half a dozen more crappy ones to reach the magic "12 songs in an album" goal.
However, given her albums' severe imbalance of quality, it's become apparent to me that it's her unique POP songs that stand out as her best, and it's the R&B/HIP-HOP songs and collabos that stand out as her worst. This has seemed to be a consistent dichotomy since Rated R.
Unapologetic demonstrates this even more severely than her last muddled effort, Talk That Talk. There are literally two songs on this album that stand as some of her all-time best, and beyond about two or three others that come off as unequivocally average, the essential R&B/Hip-hop inclusions on Unapologetic stand to me as some of Rihanna's all-time career lows.
The difference between the imbalances of Unapologetic and the imbalances of Talk That Talk was that the latter's highs were especially high. Unapologetic never quite reaches a euphoric place like We Found Love did, and with the exception of Diamonds, the other quality songs on Unapologetic are fantastic but don't quite save the rest of the album like We Found Love did. Furthermore, the lows on Talk That Talk were the same hip-hop urban flavors that are prevalent on the first half of Unapologetic, except those songs on TTT were far more approachable, catchy, and even likable.
Back to the dichotomy of unique pop vs generic hip-hop that's defined Rihanna's discography though. This duality wasn't so prevalent in Good Girl Gone Bad because her not-so-pop songs were more R&B than hip-hop, and even the songs on there that seemed to gravitate more toward hip-hop (like Lemme Get That, for example) were more riddled with caribbean flavor that made them stand out more than they could have otherwise. With Rated R, we saw those moments of pop brilliance in Russian Roulette and Te Amo, while songs like Rude Boy showed her insistence on pumping out crass, uninspired hip-hop that contributed nothing to the universe in any way, shape or form (Rude Boy being the least offensive and most popular example of this). Loud was her least unbalanced album in that most songs on that album shared a collective sound that was made even more appropriate by her era-defined red hair. Songs like S&M and Only Girl were moments of pop brilliance, while only a single song (Raining Men) showed off Rihanna's unfavorable side.
Talk That Talk and Unapologetic are the moments where her unfavorable side takes most of the spotlight, and with this review I hope to make the case that Rihanna's favorable moments are some of the most brilliant pop gems in a decade. Really. I also hope to get across why her unfavorable moments are a perpetual stain on her reputation as a musician, and her legacy as a pop star.
TRACK-BY-TRACK REVIEW COMING SOON