Album Review: Rihanna - ANTI

In the last eleven years, Rihanna has released seven albums. And I have listened to none of them. And until right now, sitting on my floor, listening to this leaked copy of her eighth album, the LONG gestating ANTI, I don’t think I’ve ever really heard a Rihanna song from start to finish.

That may be a joke. I’m not sure.

Has anyone really listened to a Rihanna album? Like, she seems like such a singles driven artist—meaning that her albums contain three, maybe four great songs on them, and the rest is just filler. Like, does Rihanna have deep cuts? Who is the intended audience for an entire album of Rihanna’s music?

I am not sure.

Rihanna has come a long way from “Pon De Replay”; from “Umbrella”; and from “We Found Love,” which was the last single I was aware of her having prior to her run of 2014 one-offs: the bizarre “FourFiveSeconds,” and the charmingly titled “Bitch Better Have My Money”—neither of which turn up on ANTI.

With executive production oversight by Kanye West, ANTI, sonically, is the product of a post-Yeezus musical landscape. It’s a hard edge album that still tries to maintain a pop sensibility, because despite her efforts to shed that image (and believe me, she tries on ANTI) Rihanna is still packaged as a pop artist.

ANTI begins two tracks that are both incredibly short—one of which is okay and kind of catchy (“Consideration”) and one of which his insipid and awful (“James Joint.”) It’s the length of these songs that had me a little confused; like, had I downloaded the full album? Was there something wrong with these files? Was this some kind of weird joke thing?

Once it was determined to not be a weird joke thing, and just two very short songs, I was wondering if this was an album full of half-baked ideas that were never fully realized.

This also turns out not to be the case.

Despite its efforts to be weird, difficult, and arty, it still has big pop moments—despite the “fuck” that she drops on more than one occasion, “Kiss It Better” is a mid-tempo banger—it’s not nearly as urgent as “We Found Love,” but it doesn’t have to be. When Rihanna sings “Kiss it kiss it better baby,” you can’t help but shout it along with her.

But as it turns out, that’s the only “banger” on the album.

That doesn’t mean that there aren’t good, or listenable songs on the album, however, because much to my surprise, there is—the slow motion, synth heavy slither of “Same Ol’ Mistakes”¹ is very welcoming, and the earnestness of the throwback R&B/soul vibes of “Love on The Brain” and “Higher” are both remarkably genuine in their own ways.

Rihanna - "Same Ol' Mistakes" (RIGHT CLICK, SAVE AS, BLAH BLAH BLAH)

ANTI closes with the obligatory piano ballad, “Close to You,” which does exactly what it’s supposed to do—show the emotion of the singer, and provide a slight frisson inducing moment on the record. Though on an album that is so reliant on keyboards and programmed beats, something like this sticks out like a sore thumb, feeling possibly tacked on as an afterthought, or the kind of song that would be delegated to be a “Target bonus track.”

As it turns out, the roll out for ANTI wound up being a bit of a botched operation, following the release (just today) of the first official single from ANTI, the nearly unlistenable “Work,” featuring Drake—the album accidentally leaked via the streaming service Tidal, and some fans were able to grab it, which is how it simply just turned up online with little to no explanation.

For something that has been as labored over and long delayed as this, it simply arriving online through various channels seems both fitting for something released in the Internet age in which we live, but also a little anti-climactic of a fate for ANTI—and both of those things are what makes it a pop record released in the year 2016.

On the album’s first track, “Consideration,” Rihanna asks to “cover your shit in glitter,” and that’s almost exactly what’s happened here.  ANTI is not the kind of album that I will be returning to regularly in its entirety, but I was pleasantly surprised by some of the sheer moments of innovative pop brilliance that are scattered throughout.

^{1- which, of all things, turns out to be a Tame Impala cover.}