Rihanna - ANTI (January (???) 2016)

who even knows anymore

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2QrWzsfghA

i mean.. that's 2016

useless drake disses rate ticking

its a free tidal download now apparently, which prob entails some tidal trial or something, which...gtfo tidal youre not real

yeah, seems like this perhaps tidal biggest opportunity. i subscribed just to get the album, might unsubscribe asap. first half is good. but not as good as the first 4 track promised.

feeling Same Ol's Mistakes

ANTI is a very good album at the very least

the fuck is "higher", her voice made me flinch so hard on that

she suits winehouseisms more than i expected on "love on the brain"

"kiss it better" and "yeah i said it" stood out but this seems as mildly unsatisfying a hotchpotch (with a few highlights) as any post-rated r rihanna album, dunno why it took so long to make

lol yeah i love being all like "yah this is cute i guess zzz w/e" with riri album trax knowing like four hundred songwriters died in roc nation concentration camps making each one

i switched this off and quit after 'woo' last night, maybe never to return tbqh

god imagine the whole rihanna team sat there as 'woo' played off "other producer travis scott beat tape vol 66" or w/e over some luxe full room system

DUN, DUN, DUN - "well guys i think we have a winner" - DUN

even the title of "woo" manages to convey a weary lack of enthusiasm

i bet it was all cobbled together in the last two weeks anyway

why the hell is she giving this away for free though?

"kiss it better" and "yeah i said it" stood out but this seems as mildly unsatisfying a hotchpotch (with a few highlights) as any post-rated r rihanna album, dunno why it took so long to make

otm. it feels flimsy and rushed and has some jams. it is a rihanna record

The hit-to-miss ratio seems higher to me than other Rihanna albums imo, so I'll probably still be listening to this after y'all have moved on. :)

lol yeah i love being all like "yah this is cute i guess zzz w/e" with riri album trax knowing like four hundred songwriters died in roc nation concentration camps making each one

― r|t|c, Thursday, January 28, 2016 3:57 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i switched this off and quit after 'woo' last night, maybe never to return tbqh

― r|t|c, Thursday, January 28, 2016 3:58 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark

lol this one has writing credits from the-dream, travis scott AND the weeknd

lol yeah i love being all like "yah this is cute i guess zzz w/e" with riri album trax knowing like four hundred songwriters died in roc nation concentration camps making each one

― r|t|c, Thursday, January 28, 2016 3:57 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I would not be surprised if somewhere close to zero of those tracks made the actual record

like, seriously, does anything about this album, its non-release, its eventual "release," its eventual unrelease, etc. come off meticulously planned and executed per plan?

(I kind of like it a lot!)

it's funny that the album had these pretenses of being a very serious artistic statement (the stuff about kanye exec producing, revealing the album cover in an art gallery) but it's about as slapdash as her previous records

sort of makes me question her taste level in the end i guess

I would not be surprised if somewhere close to zero of those tracks made the actual record

― a self-reinforcing downward spiral of male-centric indie (katherine), Thursday, January 28, 2016 9:58 AM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

take that back, looks like kenan williams won the lottery

there's a melodic phrase in "never ending" that reminds me of dido's "thank you" which pulls me out of the song every time

couple of these tracks bite tinashe's style haaaaaaard, particularly "needed me" and "yeah, i said it"

Honestly this album feels like the result of Rihanna just saying "fuck it, let's just put out what we have" and the end result is actually still pretty great. It's messy but it works.

this and that miley album seem to be starting a trend of sorts

katherine otm wrt camps

autotune/melodyne fingerprints all over this suggest they sometimes might have had only one vocal take to work with, giving the record the feeling of like, a diary of individual unplanned moments of spontaneous emotional engagement on the part of the performer

in the end, for me, the record being frequently unguarded and personal to the point of sometimes feeling voyeuristic makes for a pretty satisfying response to the last few years of castoffs like "chandelier" and "we can't stop" becoming omnipresent billboard hits. the riri hitmaking machine became so efficient that it essentially became sentient and started operating without her, so she turns around and makes a record based around messier human qualities that can't be faked or convincingly imitated by others

katherine otm wrt camps

autotune/melodyne fingerprints all over this suggest they sometimes might have had only one vocal take to work with, giving the record the feeling of like, a diary of individual unplanned moments of spontaneous emotional engagement on the part of the performer

― james brooks, Thursday, January 28, 2016 5:53 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I kinda feel like it's more "ok, please just record this thing, just one take please"

anyway here is my #take: it's instructive to compare "birthday cake" with "james joint" -- one is a barely 1:15 "song" that was blatantly unfinished and turned into a horrific tabloid monstrosity involving chris brown. one is a barely 1:15 song that's very pretty and feels sincere

rihanna's vocals have sounded one-take for years. she's often turned that hoarse scratchiness in her voice into a positive (BBHMM is a prime example) but very often it just sounds blarey and at times unlistenable (seriously "higher", WHO TOLD HER THAT WAS OKAY - rtc did you ever get beyond "woo"? you have to at least hear "higher")

though the one-take thing is evident even more in her (lack of) phrasing

a second listen has already changed my mind about winehouse being a good look for her

feel like putting "woo" in the rolling worst songs thread

it is so bad

"love on the brain" was the standout to me after one listen.

her vocals are so good on "higher"

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm yeah idk

i love the tame impala cover and i'm dreaming about rihanna going through the entire tame impala catalog

i...assumed that was sarcasm :/

xp

also "kiss it better" is ingenious; i need a loop of it playing when my body is shot into space when i die

I actually like "higher," her voice suits the last-callness of it

people really seem to either love or hate "Higher" everywhere

"higher" is one of the only songs of hers i've ever connected to emotionally and a major reason for that is that i think there's a real rawness and authenticity to her vocals

"higher" would've made a helluva closer but alas

it works because she's essentially screaming into the void with no response which enhances the sense of isolation and melodrama, to have that dusty violin remain present when it was there the whole time, twirling in the air and keeping her company

i get it but it sucks to listen to

there are plenty of rihanna ballads where she's trying to sing "correctly" but obv doesn't have the vocal talent to pull it off. if you can ride with those songs i don't really get how you draw the line at a song where she's clearly singing raggedly as a way of heightening the effect of a song that's about being emotionally spent.

also i think there's a richness to her voice on that song that she's actually cutting through, it works on both fronts

prediction: 50% of the people in this thread will come around to "higher" eventually and it'll probably be after 12 a.m. on that particular night

^^^

there's ragged singing that magnifies the emotions in a song and there's ragged singing that's still unconvincing and "higher" is def the latter

i've obviously never heard the tame impala original and am mildly disgusted that this cover exists, but in terms of both song and production it's really a standout, albeit by low standards

the tame impala original is the exact same thing, with kevin parker singing. i will say i prefer rihanna's voice

there's ragged singing that magnifies the emotions in a song and there's ragged singing that's still unconvincing and "higher" is def the latter

― cher guevara (lex pretend), Thursday, January 28, 2016 7:35 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

you're wrong but taste is taste

yeah i get that the desperation in her voice is sort of ~the point~ with "higher" but all the same i wish she'd done a second vocal take. everything else about the song (lyrics, instrumentation) i am very down with