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

it's her best singles run since GGGB tho...

i don't really get the praise for this album, if anything there's a bigger quality gap between the singles and the rest than on a lot of her other albums

― a goon shaped tool (some dude), Tuesday, May 10, 2016

i don't even agree with this statement but anyway it was a full three months between when the album dropped and when "kiss it better" & "needed me" became singles so you really got to live with those as "part of the album" so to speak

Yeah if anything I feel like there's less of a distinction between her singles and the album cuts, both in terms of tone and quality, than there usually is on her albums. To me it holds together amazingly well.

I'd agree that it's not a self-evidently Great Album the way maybe Beyonce's last few have been. It took a while to grow on me, but the songwriting is super strong throughout, so I just kept finding new material to connect with. I have a soft spot for albums that reveal themselves slowly like that.

Even the singles were slow-growers. "Work" was dismissed as lightweight at first, and maybe as a sign of an impending flop, but it stands up to a thousand repetitions. And not too many people singled out "Kiss It Better" as an obvious single, even though it feels like one in hindsight.

"Sex with me" deserves more acclaim& attention

this album def has its moments (not nec the singles) but it's no more satisfying an album-qua-album as anything else she's done since rated r, and the idea that it's some huge volte face away from a commercial sound to ~greater artistry is a bit ridiculous

And not too many people singled out "Kiss It Better" as an obvious single, even though it feels like one in hindsight.

I too love this album and mostly agree with your posts about it ITT, but I'm not sure this is quite right. For the post-BBHMM months of 2015 when we were in ANTi purgatory, "Kiss It Better" was hailed as THE song that was going to save the campaign. ATRL poster types were wetting themselves over a 10 second snapchat video of it being played back in the studio for months.

and xp idk about "~greater artistry", but I do think a lot of this - "Woo", "Higher", "James Joint", the tame impala cover - scans to me as fairly uncommercial.

Maybe I need to recalibrate my idea of commerciality but "This Is What You Came For" seems much more geared toward that than the album.

she's always had deep cuts that didn't sound especially commercial ("phresh out the runway", "love without tragedy/mother mary" etc etc) but i guess i disagree that anything about anti showcases a deeper side of rihanna as an artist, or that the album represents turning her back on pop. and "woo" and "higher" sound uncommercial because they're terrible, not because they're interesting or experimental

"Kiss It Better" was hailed as THE song that was going to save the campaign

but only by the kind of ppl who would base this off a 10-second snapchat snippet! most of the world didn't even know the song existed

well, sure, but most of the world probably doesn't have an opinion about rihanna album campaigns and what should and shouldn't be a single either

also i just researched matters more thoroughly and discovered that in fact rihanna posted about this song to instagram in 2014 and 175,000 people liked her post https://www.instagram.com/p/wZn2FQBMxx/

What are the odds of this getting a vinyl release?

Not good? Would be a first for Riri I think

this performance is fuckin great http://www.gossipcop.com/rihanna-love-on-the-brain-billboard-music-awards-video-bbmas-performance-watch/

xp I was wrong, both A Girl Like Me and Good Girl Gone Bad were released on vinyl (and a ton of singles on 12" ofc) but I still don't think it's likely we'll see an official Anti LP since last 4 albums were cd/digital only - there's an unofficial one though, if you just want big cover art https://www.discogs.com/Rihanna-Anti/release/8331284

but it is weird that a huge "urban" release like this isn't issued on vinyl (when the goddamn top gun soundtrack is reissued...), same thing w/ channel orange and nothing was the same

I feel like history will vindicate "Kiss It Better." Already acts are covering it (Miguel and Father John Misty, which yeah, I know), and that helps canonize a song.

haha it's SUCH a Miguel song. It seemed like the obvious non-"Work" hit single to me when I heard the album, but I guess I was wrong. "Needed Me" has never connected with me at all. Also, this album as a whole isn't in any way better than most of her work, although yes the opening run is very good.

Maybe this is just music-critic logic, but it feels different from her other albums, even if song for song it isn't necessarily better than those albums. It's got its own flow and logic, and it's just beautifully and thoughtfully sequenced. It holds together less like a conventional pop album and more like some of my fav R&B records from the last five-ish years: All I Want Is You, Channel Orange, Late Nights (the album/the tape).

All of those releases had this sort of abstract quality to them, kind of a puzzle logic. They were pieced together from vignettes and sketches but held together as a whole. They had this kind of cocky, understated confidence to them, and this record feels like Rihanna's own, highly individualistic answer to that. It's exciting.

I understand that a lot of fans get touchy when ppl suggest this is some huge leap for her, and implicitly knock her previous albums. But I don't think the praise is meant to be a matter of better or worse, it's just that this is a very different statement from those records.

Also vocally I think this is the best thing she's ever sounded. Her performances here are remarkable

Everywhere I go - Work work work work work. Passing cars, always on the radio. It's awesome.

I'm completely fine with people knocking her previous work. She just has never been a great album artist. I do agree she's singing better than ever though.

y'all are nuts; i like the vocal on "higher."

might cut the tame impala song by a few minutes, but I like this a lot.

This went longer and deeper than I possibly could've imagined when I clicked the link

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/rihannas-bitch-better-have-my-money-expanded-for-freelancers?fbclid=IwAR3q0oyYWF8AlZuey1U6jLKhgyQowL5Z9saN40njtjrxPW98n6QkZ-rnJ0c

feel like i was wrong about this record. i mean i refuse to check my comments upthread but iirc it felt too fragmented and disjointed and also i really hated "woo"? "never ending" still kinda feels like it doesn't do anything and lol @ retroactive dido credit but also whatever. i like the way these songs work together, even and especially when they feel like fragments forced together. "woo" would suck without rihanna but thankfully rihanna is on it, etc.

I feel "Woo," and yes the vocal performance is like 95% of it.

I'm already sad about the strong possibility Anti will get bumped from most "best of the decade" lists.

"woo" & "desperado" & "never ending" are not really that great but this is still an amazing record in which nobody really saw the artist's vision until after they mostly agreed it wasn't a good album (guilty as charged)

I wish she'd just replaced Woo with Pose

I wonder how those who aren't into "Woo" feel about "Pose." I hear them as companion tracks -- about equally post-Yeezus and noise-pop. I usually consume Anti with its 3 bonus tracks and ending with "Sex With Me." The abrasive jams feel like a crucial part of makes this record special.

"sex with me" so amazing, but yeah i love all three bonus tracks, they feel indivisible from the record

Totally agree that Anti is holding up really well. I do still feel like the whole, "she's finally made a great album" response she received from a lot of critics wasn't fair considering how brilliant Rated R is. Good Girl Gone Bad to a lesser extent too.

Great album, and yes, much more of a piece than most of her other albums. Top 10 of the decade for me, for sure. Classic for “Needed Me” alone, what a song. Kudos to her and her team for going with that one as a single so early on in the album campaign* (even if it was perhaps half-heartedly - they had obviously earmarked “Kiss It Better” as the bigger hit). I think hardly anyone saw that song coming - in this (long) thread it’s only mentioned once (neutrally) before it was released as a single. I love how people itt are ever so slowly waking up to its greatness, just like it crept up on me back then.

*as noted in the thread, this decision might have been informed by its strong streaming numbers. A case of the public knows best?

(And yessss to “Sex With Me” - I discarded it for the longest time because I thought it was just too tacky. I was wrong.)

Same re: "Sex With Me." Huge creeper.

5 years! i think. either today or tmrw.

Album of the decade

feel dumb that this getting bumped actually got my hopes up for the mythical Next Album

Nothing yet, but there's been plenty of Fenty product announcements lol

the best album ever

i continue to be full of shit upthread as i now love "never ending"

such a bizarre & brilliant album... been putting it on again recently. that kid’s mash up of kiss it better & never too much put it back in my head. the four text remix of kiss it better is also great, could almost be a piece of the proper album

i can’t think of many albums where my love for it represents such a 180 from my initial impressions

she has a new… song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ospQ06jJe-I

co-written by Tems
for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
will there be more? no idea
she’s in great voice tho if there was any doubt

It is basically a Tems song, karaoke'd by Rihanna, lol

"First new song in 6 years" is kind of nuts, right?

I <3 Tems and this is fine, but I doubt I'll ever play it again

the biggest headscratcher of a rihanna 'comeback' single since "fourfiveseconds" (which i'm still amazed ended up being a proper hit even after the initial hype wore off)

i like it but yeah i doubt i'll play it again lol. there's a video too that's kinda *makes jerk-off motion* imo. seems like the kind of thing i could come around to if it was played everywhere though.

i've grown to really like "fourfiveseconds" lol, maybe i'll eventually grow to like this? good singing, tho it feels like karaoke.

It’s no ‘Kiss It Better’