Rihanna gives Lady Gaga a run for her money with sassy new album Produd

 

 

She is an artist who has learned to grow up fast. During her half-decade in the limelight, the 22-year-old Bajan bombshell's image has developed at an ever accelerating pace.
Now, with Loud, her lust-filled fifth album, Rihanna moves closer to fulfilling her ambition - stated early in her career - to become "the black Madonna".
"I like things strong and edgy," she smiles.
"I don't like things that are expected."
The teenybop, carnival reggae princess who appeared on her tentative 2005 debut Music Of The Sun seems a world away from the flame-haired hip-hop temptress who strides, and writhes, her way through Loud. In a pop world driven into a hormonal frenzy by Lady Gaga and her pal Katy Perry, Rihanna is clearly ready to compete.
Of course, much has happened between then and now. She left her Caribbean home to find the fame she dreamed of while growing up in Barbados in the shadow of an absentee crack-addicted father. In America, Jay-Z spotted her determination right away.
"Rihanna has an intensity and a drive for success," Jigga enthused. "I sign artists based on their swagger and level of talent. She's got both."
Their relationship would make Rihanna the biggest breakout female star of the decade, no small thanks to the ubiquitous Jay-Z-assisted international smash Umbrella.
Only Jay's missus, Beyoncé, sold more records in the last decade than Rihanna, and she had a five-year head start. Loud is an album of risque fun and hard-won maturity, representative of how Rihanna's enjoyed both fame's pleasures and its pains.

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Following last year's dark and confused Rated R - which dealt with the fallout from her ugly break-up with Chris Brown - Loud rolls out Rihanna's own particular type of fun. She flys her freak flag high on the sabre-rattling Drake duet What's My Name? and the taunting symbolism of the opening S&M. On the latter she tells her side of the song's domestic abuse saga.
"On the first page of our story, the future seemed so bright/Then this thing turned so evil...." Rihanna sings.
This uncovering of old wounds, playing out her part with the "I love it/I love it" lyrical hook, is bound to attract criticism. Not that she feels any need to apologise. "Every word in the song is true," Rihanna says. "It would take someone who's been on the inside to understand how magical those lyrics are. I was over my last project. I was ready to reinvent myself. Rated R helped me get over a really crazy time in my life."
The pumping palpitations continue on the throbbing techno beats of Only Girl (In The World), Rihanna reaching a climactic high as her baby makes her feel "like I'm the only girl in the world".
Despite the boisterous and extrovert spin it's been given, Loud is, like its predecessor, a patchy album. This may be partly due to the rushed way it was recorded while on tour.
It may also be down to how Rihanna plc - with a forthcoming autobiography, newly inaugurated entertainment company, perfume franchise and burgeoning movie - seeks market saturation.
Hence the hideously overcooked power ballad California King Bed, complete with squalling guitar, and the tearful lunge for diva status on Complicated.
The battlefield imagery of Man Down reinforces the gun tattoo-sporting, former army cadet side of Rihanna, while the album closes with a sequel to this summer's hook-up with Eminem, Love The Way You Lie (Part II). In the ever-unfolding saga of Rihanna it is a masterstroke, ending an essentially funfilled album with a dark, edgy sign-off.
Loud is out on Monday.

By Gavin Martin and mirror.co.uk

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