Rihanna - Rated R

Rihanna’s latest album ‘Rated R’ is good in the sense that the songs are catchy, radio-worthy and overall appealing to the general population. Regular readers of this blog will probably know where I’m going with this.

The album is skilfully compiled, with a wide variety of well-composed beats and songs, ranging from pop, slow jams, hard-core hip hop and rnb, and even an ‘experimental’ rock song. However, the songs’ contents lack any real artistic merit and maturity, oscillating superficially between anger, remorse and self-pity. This is probably due to the fact that this album was Rihanna’s first professional attempt at song writing, and it shows.

In an interview with ‘W’ magazine, Rihanna says of the album, “It was really personal; it was from me in the most authentic way. It’s like a movie.” If this album was like a movie, then it was a very high-budget, low-substance type of movie; the kind where you put all the young Hollywood big names in a superficial storyline to get the teeny-boppers into the cinemas. The accompanying album photos, of Rihanna in various forms of violent erotica, cements efforts to appeal to a general populace who have been conditioned to find such ‘controversial’ images alluring.

The only song which sounded like it had any real, genuine, untainted emotion was ‘The Last Song’, the final track of the album. This song was perhaps the saving grace of the record. The chorus asks, “What if you wasted love and all of our time disappeared? And this sad song ends up being the last song you’ll ever hear?” It really did capture the emotional despair and regret of a love gone wrong.

Overall though, it is apparent that, other than being a weak expression of Rihanna’s psyche, the album’s main goal is really about selling records and captialising on her very public and personal break up with Chris Brown. Because in terms of harnessing such a traumatic experience into something artistic, ie. an artistic response, this album fails. It’s too polished, prescribed, and typical of ‘personal’ albums that still want to sound ‘pretty’ in order to sell. Compare this with Kanye West’s ‘808s’, where the artist was not afraid to channel his anger, frustration and overwhelming sense of loss into something confronting, uncomfortable and down-right ugly. That was a real, authentic, poetic response. Rihanna’s was simply amateur storytelling. [Image from http://rashaentertainment.com/]