Pop Star 101

Rihanna's Rated R

by J. Edward Keyes

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Published: Dec 1, 2009

By now, even people who have never heard a note of Rihanna's music are familiar with the awful details of the last nine months of her life. The victim of abuse at the hands of her then-boyfriend, alleged R&B "singer" Chris Brown, Rihanna has — in a surprisingly brief period of time — emerged both tough and triumphant. One of the first things she sneers on Rated R, her grim fourth album, is, "I'm such a fucking lady," and the rest of the record is given over to exploring the full range of that contradictory statement.

Even before her personal tragedy, Rihanna seemed distinctly uncomfortable with the sunny confines of radio R&B. Since 2007's fitfully brilliant Good Girl Gone Bad, both her image and her music have been skewing progressively darker, more Siouxsie Sioux than Shakira. On Rated R she turns herself over completely to that rep, and the result is a bravura performance, easily the best of her career and certainly the first time she's emerged as having both a persona and a viewpoint that were singularly her own. And if her early attempts at domina-tricks occasionally seemed manufactured, on Rated R, Rihanna is fully, alarmingly alive, spitting obscenities, repeatedly brandishing handguns and firebombing the ride of the lover who tried to cross her.

The problem with Rated R isn't Rihanna — it's the leaden, lethargic songs with which she's saddled. For a record that bristles with such anger and passion, the production is distressingly limp. You can't help but imagine what it might be like if she were delivering these same songs from the inside of a Knife record. She's not, though, and with the exception of the busy and dizzying "Hard" — where she's aided by a snarling Young Jeezy — Rihanna is left to stalk and seethe in front of chintzy sheet-metal sets. The whole record is littered with puzzling musical decisions. Whose idea was it, on a song called "Rockstar 101," to mix a single synth tom higher than the electric guitar? How did the line "Where them bloggers at" make the cut? Worst of all: How can a record so full of conviction be such a bore?

(j_keyes@citypaper.net)

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