After singer Chris Brown reenacted scenes from the film, Fight Club on his former girlfriend singer Rihanna’s pretty face earlier this year, it’s no surprise that Rihanna is no longer in the mood to sing trancey dance songs with Michael Jackson chanting in the background. Instead of trying to make people dance, with her new album Rated R Rihanna has recorded cold, metallic songs full of military references and quiet anger.
Most of Rated R’s songs bring to mind images of Rihanna singing the songs while riding in an army tank. The industrial production inspires this image of Rihanna as a soldier of war. The album’s most militant songs are its best songs because they suggest an evolution for Rihanna’s music, while the remaining songs are from her poppy past and sound as if they were left over from 2007’s Good Girl Gone Bad.
On Rated R’s best songs Rihanna establishes her new hardened musical persona sounding something like a gangster. She is at her most thuggish on “Hard,” in which she inspires listeners to simultaneously think of apocalyptic warfare and fashion runway shows. With lines like “they think they test me now/run through your town, I shut it down” and “and my runway never looked so clear/got the hottest bitch in heels right here,” it’s easy to see that Rihanna still has an ego after admitting in a Diane Sawyer interview that she was “embarrassed” to have fallen for a guy like Chris Brown. “Hard’s” scowling bass line, which guides the main hook “so hard, so hard” sounds like the victorious bass line from The Jackson’s 1984 hit, “Can You Feel It.” That bass line and the Thriller homage, the introductory “Mad House” are the extent of The Gloved One’s influence on Rated R. On “Wait Your Turn” Rihanna wastes no time sparking the wartime imagery stating in the first two lines, “I pitch with a grenade/swing away if you’re feelin’ brave.” It’s one of Rated R’s angrier songs where Rihanna’s rage boils a bit over the surface and the listener can hear the clenched teeth in her voice. Musically, “Wait Your Turn” sounds like a Star Wars theme anchored by videogame synths. And last and least is the anemic first single, “Russian Roulette” that sounds like music fit for a funeral. Ne-Yo wrote the song, but he writes his best material for Rihanna when Danish production duo Stargate is at the helm, which they are not on "Roulette." The beat of “Roulette” matches the warfare motif of “Wait Your Turn” and “Hard” to a lesser degree, but it’s still one of Rated R’s weakest songs even next to the pop-lite songs like “Rude Boy.”
Rated R’s worth rests on two statuesque songs written by talented songwriter James Fauntleroy (the man who wrote Jordin Sparks’ airborne hit, “No Air”). The songs are “G4L” (Gangsta 4 Life) and “Fire Bomb.” Both are songs that broadly address Rihanna’s incident with Chris Brown by way of her muted anger to the point that you can picture Rihanna’s heavily eye-lined eyes glaring. She spits with venom on “G4L” “I lick the gun/when I’m done/’cuz revenge is sweet” and you sense that Rihanna is definitely capable of going all Red Sonja on someone’s butt. She tries a couple flows and cadences Bone Thugs-N-Harmony-style across a sinister synth beat reminiscent of a track by electro-thrash duo Crystal Castles. “Fire Bomb” is Rihanna’s own swelling rock opera that is a ball of tempered anger. The song’s main bass line is a guitar loop that resembles a steady-flowing machine gun. The guitar chords have a crashing pace that add sound to Rihanna’s lyrics, “Where I’m going I don’t need my brakes/Can’t wait to see your face/when your front windows break/and I come crashing through” during the b-section that’s sandwiched between the verses. The b-section is the car set in motion and the chorus is the crash, the explosion. The static of Rihanna’s voice is ghostly and the buildup is ethereal. The references to needing masks to breath relate back to Rated R’s military theme.
Rated R is an album that is not Rihanna’s best ever album because none of her albums are her best, but it is certainly her most vocally strong. Her anger finally seems like it has depth. Her past albums have the dance-pop songs that made Rihanna a superstar, so they will always have their value, but Rated R represents something new for Rihanna artistically though it may not be commercially successful.
Most of Rated R’s songs bring to mind images of Rihanna singing the songs while riding in an army tank. The industrial production inspires this image of Rihanna as a soldier of war. The album’s most militant songs are its best songs because they suggest an evolution for Rihanna’s music, while the remaining songs are from her poppy past and sound as if they were left over from 2007’s Good Girl Gone Bad.
On Rated R’s best songs Rihanna establishes her new hardened musical persona sounding something like a gangster. She is at her most thuggish on “Hard,” in which she inspires listeners to simultaneously think of apocalyptic warfare and fashion runway shows. With lines like “they think they test me now/run through your town, I shut it down” and “and my runway never looked so clear/got the hottest bitch in heels right here,” it’s easy to see that Rihanna still has an ego after admitting in a Diane Sawyer interview that she was “embarrassed” to have fallen for a guy like Chris Brown. “Hard’s” scowling bass line, which guides the main hook “so hard, so hard” sounds like the victorious bass line from The Jackson’s 1984 hit, “Can You Feel It.” That bass line and the Thriller homage, the introductory “Mad House” are the extent of The Gloved One’s influence on Rated R. On “Wait Your Turn” Rihanna wastes no time sparking the wartime imagery stating in the first two lines, “I pitch with a grenade/swing away if you’re feelin’ brave.” It’s one of Rated R’s angrier songs where Rihanna’s rage boils a bit over the surface and the listener can hear the clenched teeth in her voice. Musically, “Wait Your Turn” sounds like a Star Wars theme anchored by videogame synths. And last and least is the anemic first single, “Russian Roulette” that sounds like music fit for a funeral. Ne-Yo wrote the song, but he writes his best material for Rihanna when Danish production duo Stargate is at the helm, which they are not on "Roulette." The beat of “Roulette” matches the warfare motif of “Wait Your Turn” and “Hard” to a lesser degree, but it’s still one of Rated R’s weakest songs even next to the pop-lite songs like “Rude Boy.”
Rated R’s worth rests on two statuesque songs written by talented songwriter James Fauntleroy (the man who wrote Jordin Sparks’ airborne hit, “No Air”). The songs are “G4L” (Gangsta 4 Life) and “Fire Bomb.” Both are songs that broadly address Rihanna’s incident with Chris Brown by way of her muted anger to the point that you can picture Rihanna’s heavily eye-lined eyes glaring. She spits with venom on “G4L” “I lick the gun/when I’m done/’cuz revenge is sweet” and you sense that Rihanna is definitely capable of going all Red Sonja on someone’s butt. She tries a couple flows and cadences Bone Thugs-N-Harmony-style across a sinister synth beat reminiscent of a track by electro-thrash duo Crystal Castles. “Fire Bomb” is Rihanna’s own swelling rock opera that is a ball of tempered anger. The song’s main bass line is a guitar loop that resembles a steady-flowing machine gun. The guitar chords have a crashing pace that add sound to Rihanna’s lyrics, “Where I’m going I don’t need my brakes/Can’t wait to see your face/when your front windows break/and I come crashing through” during the b-section that’s sandwiched between the verses. The b-section is the car set in motion and the chorus is the crash, the explosion. The static of Rihanna’s voice is ghostly and the buildup is ethereal. The references to needing masks to breath relate back to Rated R’s military theme.
Rated R is an album that is not Rihanna’s best ever album because none of her albums are her best, but it is certainly her most vocally strong. Her anger finally seems like it has depth. Her past albums have the dance-pop songs that made Rihanna a superstar, so they will always have their value, but Rated R represents something new for Rihanna artistically though it may not be commercially successful.
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