Rihanna - ANTI (January (???) 2016)

i dunno i feel like she's having a lot of fun with the delivery. the overall song, with the drake part and all, i don't love, but it's a great rihanna performance.

Yeah I like the vocals too. She's having fun with it but part of what she's having fun with is breaking down the sounds as if she's as bored with them as she is with having to "work" I think. No one who was really bored would dare such a sloppy delivery on such an important song.

i think her delivery is more on point here than almost anything else she's sang on. it's a beautiful record.

shouldn't have said "almost." this is her best.

yeah i don't even think the delivery is 'sloppy,' she's just using her native accent on the song more vs. something like "Pon De Replay" where everything is really painstakingly enunciated to make it more palatable to American audiences

i saw a hard copy of this album today 1 of my coworkers had it

I love "Work" and her vocal on it too. It's the piano that takes it over the top though. Her (and Drake's) live performance of it on the Brits however...

i had avoided 'work' because, you know drake and yeah he absolutely torpedoes the track but at the moment i am all
http://nutbreath.tumblr.com/post/140235952802/when-yall-start-arguing-over-the-aux-cord-no

possible album of the year for me. i know it's early but i haven't re-listened to anything this much since black messiah.

tracks 1-9 anyway.

keep coming back to this record. "desperado" & "woo" are still kinda wack to me tho i've warmed to "desperado"

i love the mood of "needed me" & "yeah i sad it"

the lyrics of "needed me" are so good i wish it had any sort of hook

"desperado" playing after "work" has made me like it somewhat!

i dunno i like that cascading "ne-ee-ee-ee-eeded me" part

Robert Christgau raved about it.

Rihanna: Anti (Deluxe Edition) (Westbury Road/Roc Nation) The reason I like this record beginning to end has zip to do with whether it documents her sexual mood swings more proudly or soulfully. The presentational Rihanna is so unlike anyone I know that she can say anything she wants about her musical punany as long as she leaves Chris Brown out of it—with this artist, sex is figurative, symbolic, the mark of a pleasure taker turned pleasure provider. So Anti is her best album for a reason so simple it's tautological—despite its supposed rejection of track-and-hook mechanics, it features catchier songs. True, the main time they really make me go woo is when she breaks into gibberish at the end of "Work." But then some German hands her "Love on the Brain," the best new doowop song in decades, which segues perfectly to a power entreaty avec drunk violins, after which the album proper goes out on a piano-enhanced coda that adds a nice sweetness. Only instead of savoring this narrative arc, why don't you just proceed to the three bonus tracks, which top an M.I.A. move with none other than "Sex With Me"? A

christgau's writing style and persona seems so dated now, aside from "these are the catchiest songs of rihanna's career" being an insane opinion

and almost like, objectively wrong

... right down to "some German" handling her Love On The Brain. Sigh.

in RC's defense "Work" gets stuck in my head like no other prior Rihanna song

glad this thread has reached a more sane equlibrium on this album, though I actually forgot about lol Woo, I deleted it so fast. I made peace with "HIgher" by deciding it's a Tom Waits circa Small Changes homage. "Consideration" is kinda slept on itt

i always enjoy "consideration" when i put it on but i can never remember any of it afterwards!

I love "Kiss It Better" and will prefer to hear it 1000x times a day over the menace called "Work."

huh, "consideration" was the first track I really connected with, though its p structurally loose so I can see it feeling evasive. I like that it's a duet, plus it has a kind of Broadway meets Kingston feel to it.

is "work" a menace because it's an earworm or cuz of Drake? regarding the latter, I like to imagine that "who am I to hold your past against you?" is directed at him. he also comes bearing the good news that there's a campaign to end him

(a) the gibberish is an annoyance
(b) Drake

"Needed Me" sounded amazing on Hot 97 today. I hope they stick with it for the next radio hit.

i always enjoy "consideration" when i put it on but i can never remember any of it afterwards!

had the exact opposite effect on me.

"needed me" starting to get radio play over here too. it's been charting really well based almost solely on heavy streaming activity so it would appear the demand is there.

nah "Needed Me" and "Kiss" were both released as singles simultaneously

or you mean the streaming before the single release, yeah it was already doing pretty well.

I get consideration in my head all the time. I love the vocal line even though/because it reminds me of wendy vainity's "I am a cat" video

love this album, way more than i would have ever imagined. didn't trust my judgment at first, maybe i just really want to fuck rihanna right now, and was reassured by the xgau review until i read it and it was clear he just really wants to fuck rihanna right now. other than rated r i haven't heard any other entire rihanna albums, her pace kinda screams 'hits and filler' to me and i could get the hits from radio. what else do i need to check out?

rated r is her only album qua album masterpiece (and is weirdly the album anti feels like it's trying to replicate, but not as well)

i would probably argue for music of the sun as her second best album

I don't think anti is trying to replicate it but it's trying very hard to be a career changer - like rated r was. Only then she had some very good reasons for wanting to change her image/persona whereas this time it feels slightly forced?

Unapologetic is her best followed by Good Girl Gone Bad imo

Rated R, Good Girl Gone Bad, Loud and Unapologetic are all good albums, which is partly why the narrative about ANTi being her first ALBUM is so frustrating.

AOTY

it's a really good album!

i probably like Talk That Talk and Unapologetic best. Rated R and Good Girl Gone Bad are among the stronger ones but have stuff i don't like at all. Anti somewhere below those.

Anti has like 5 great songs and then stuff that doesn't work so much for me, about typical

anti may not be rihanna's first good album but it is her first *cohesive* album in quite some time

i was going to say it's certainly the one with the least "stuff that doesn't work so much for me" since rated r, but then i realised i never actually listened to unapologetic in full

have come to think of the first four tracks together representing the best and most true capsule suite of the full rihanna experience. impulsive/ thoughtful, messy/self-aware-calculated, sentimental/real, cheap/lavish, trite/evocative, and all of it sort of touching in its signature way ("i come fluttering in from neverland" perfect, she knows herself better than we do)

can be expanded to first six if cynical meta if necc cos 'desperado' is default ri album trash and 'woo' is cool junk

i still don't really bother sticking around for the rest, seems reiterative, duration of marination is a personal pref but doesnt add more flava

(westwood did teach me that 'sex with me' is the spring jammy jam though, pure temptay-shuun)

xgau rvw is great btw fuck the haters

ah, for me the second half(let's say from "needed me" to the end) is the best (although "consideration" and "kiss it better" are among my favourite tracks here).
I love the one-two punch "love on the brain"/"higher".
I have the impression her singing is more varied than before.
good album overall.

xp
Rihanna as Peter Pan to a culture of Wendys is so good: "I have to do things my own way darling"

p sure any configuration of her and us as peter, tink and/or wendy is arguable tbh

"Sex with you" is my favorite on the album tbh

to echo billstevjim it is indeed beautiful and does indeed rule, i couldn't love this more. can't recall a mainstream pop album i've liked as much since maybe Futuresex/Lovesounds. seems she's doing almost the entire thing on the tour dates too, or like 9 tracks at least each night.

I unabashedly love this album. Incredible songwriting, gorgeous production, really inventive, ballsy vocal performances.

Reminds me a lot of Channel Orange in its varied aesthetics, dream logic and vignette-esque storytelling. Also it's an album that feels oblique and impressionistic at first, but reveals itself to be incredibly openhearted after multiple listens. It's incredible.

Shame about this album's bungled release, though. The narrative around it should have been "holy shit this album is incredible," instead it was "lol Tidal."

agree on all counts

interesting that "needed me" is really taking off while "kiss it better" is looking like a pretty big flop