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

I'm completely fine with people knocking her previous work. She just has never been a great album artist. I do agree she's singing better than ever though.

y'all are nuts; i like the vocal on "higher."

might cut the tame impala song by a few minutes, but I like this a lot.

This went longer and deeper than I possibly could've imagined when I clicked the link

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/rihannas-bitch-better-have-my-money-expanded-for-freelancers?fbclid=IwAR3q0oyYWF8AlZuey1U6jLKhgyQowL5Z9saN40njtjrxPW98n6QkZ-rnJ0c

feel like i was wrong about this record. i mean i refuse to check my comments upthread but iirc it felt too fragmented and disjointed and also i really hated "woo"? "never ending" still kinda feels like it doesn't do anything and lol @ retroactive dido credit but also whatever. i like the way these songs work together, even and especially when they feel like fragments forced together. "woo" would suck without rihanna but thankfully rihanna is on it, etc.

I feel "Woo," and yes the vocal performance is like 95% of it.

I'm already sad about the strong possibility Anti will get bumped from most "best of the decade" lists.

"woo" & "desperado" & "never ending" are not really that great but this is still an amazing record in which nobody really saw the artist's vision until after they mostly agreed it wasn't a good album (guilty as charged)

I wish she'd just replaced Woo with Pose

I wonder how those who aren't into "Woo" feel about "Pose." I hear them as companion tracks -- about equally post-Yeezus and noise-pop. I usually consume Anti with its 3 bonus tracks and ending with "Sex With Me." The abrasive jams feel like a crucial part of makes this record special.

"sex with me" so amazing, but yeah i love all three bonus tracks, they feel indivisible from the record

Totally agree that Anti is holding up really well. I do still feel like the whole, "she's finally made a great album" response she received from a lot of critics wasn't fair considering how brilliant Rated R is. Good Girl Gone Bad to a lesser extent too.

Great album, and yes, much more of a piece than most of her other albums. Top 10 of the decade for me, for sure. Classic for “Needed Me” alone, what a song. Kudos to her and her team for going with that one as a single so early on in the album campaign* (even if it was perhaps half-heartedly - they had obviously earmarked “Kiss It Better” as the bigger hit). I think hardly anyone saw that song coming - in this (long) thread it’s only mentioned once (neutrally) before it was released as a single. I love how people itt are ever so slowly waking up to its greatness, just like it crept up on me back then.

*as noted in the thread, this decision might have been informed by its strong streaming numbers. A case of the public knows best?

(And yessss to “Sex With Me” - I discarded it for the longest time because I thought it was just too tacky. I was wrong.)

Same re: "Sex With Me." Huge creeper.

5 years! i think. either today or tmrw.

Album of the decade

feel dumb that this getting bumped actually got my hopes up for the mythical Next Album

Nothing yet, but there's been plenty of Fenty product announcements lol

the best album ever

i continue to be full of shit upthread as i now love "never ending"

such a bizarre & brilliant album... been putting it on again recently. that kid’s mash up of kiss it better & never too much put it back in my head. the four text remix of kiss it better is also great, could almost be a piece of the proper album

i can’t think of many albums where my love for it represents such a 180 from my initial impressions

she has a new… song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ospQ06jJe-I

co-written by Tems
for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
will there be more? no idea
she’s in great voice tho if there was any doubt

It is basically a Tems song, karaoke'd by Rihanna, lol

"First new song in 6 years" is kind of nuts, right?

I <3 Tems and this is fine, but I doubt I'll ever play it again

the biggest headscratcher of a rihanna 'comeback' single since "fourfiveseconds" (which i'm still amazed ended up being a proper hit even after the initial hype wore off)

i like it but yeah i doubt i'll play it again lol. there's a video too that's kinda *makes jerk-off motion* imo. seems like the kind of thing i could come around to if it was played everywhere though.

i've grown to really like "fourfiveseconds" lol, maybe i'll eventually grow to like this? good singing, tho it feels like karaoke.

It’s no ‘Kiss It Better’