She can be kinda funny (or at least genuinely excitable) in interviews. Her semi-scripted dance moves are sultry and spontaneous. Her voice- once fragile and shrill- is now robust enough to take on songs like the delightfully Eurotrash pounder "Only Girl (In the World)" not only on record but at high profile awards-show performances. Though gifted with runway-ready looks, Rihanna has improved in other areas through sheer perseverance. But now Rihanna is capable of adding her own West Indian lilt and charisma to the tipsy track- you can almost hear her smirk as she brings hashtag rap to pop&B: "It's gettin' Coyote Ugly up in here/ No Tyra!"Īfter releasing five albums in as many years, the singer is closer than ever to becoming the complete pop package Jay-Z envisioned when he signed her the same day she walked into Def Jam during his tenure as president. In his review of Good Girl, Pitchfork's Tom Breihan wrote that Rihanna "comes off sounding like a robot programmed to impersonate Alanis Morissette." And the acoustic strums and mid-tempo drum beat- not to mention the vocal sample of Avril Lavigne's "I'm With You"- on "Cheers" are particularly Alanis-esque. But she's more experienced, and unlike some of her early material, you feel like she's actually connecting with these tunes on more than a purely melodic level. And while Rihanna had a hand in writing most of the songs on Rated R, she's not credited with writing anything here. There's no grand statement here, no tabloid back story. "People are gonna talk whether you're doin' bad or good." The lines sum up the general sentiment of Loud nicely. "Life's too short to be sittin' around miserable," sings Rihanna with a shrug on future 2 a.m.
Not so on Loud, which has the 22-year-old Barbados-born star picking up where 2007's Good Girl Gone Bad left off, doling out effervescent pop like it was her birthright. And while that cathartic album provided an outlet for her frustrations and allowed her to claim some artistic bona fides, the actual songs were often plodding and weighed down by overwrought melodrama. All this just a year after Rated R, her spiked-out reaction to staggering emotional and physical trauma. All the while whipping her neon-stop-sign hair and smiling and throwing up ridiculous devil's horns.
If she's not spilling milk with Drake in a (impressively spotless) bodega in her "What's My Name?" video, she's playfully grabbing Nicki Minaj's ass at the American Music Awards or living out millions of karaoke dreams by singing "Livin' on a Prayer" with Bon Jovi during a recent show in Madrid.
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