Evaluation: Rihanna ANTI

Premature Evaluation: Rihanna ANTI

We’ve never really anticipated a Rihanna album before, since we’ve never really had to anticipate one before. For years, she was clockwork, cranking out a new collection every fall. Those albums would generally include three or four massive, undeniable hits and a bunch of other songs that sounded a bit like hits but weren’t on that level. On those albums, the least essential element was often Rihanna herself. She was an icy, robotic blank, a vehicle for these incredible songs cranked out by top-dollar songwriting camps. Rihanna mattered, of course. Each of these successive hits helped build her persona and show off different aspects of what she could do. But you couldn’t listen to these songs and get any idea of who the actual human singing them really was. That wasn’t the point. She was a sleek, exquisite delivery system. And because of her power to deliver those songs so well, she may have become the greatest pure singles artist of our young century. It’s been just a little more than
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