Wednesday, 25 November 2009
On Rihanna's last CD, she was a good girl gone bad. On her latest, "Rated R," she's definitely a bad girl — more like a mad girl, and a dangerous one, out for revenge. Throughout her fourth studio album, the 21-year-old is reasserting her strength through viciousness and vulgarity. And sometimes it works, like on "Rude Boy," "Hard" and "Wait Your Turn".
Whether it's the numerous f-bombs she drops or screaming "guns in the air" and that she's "gangster for life" — it's unnecessary, and more than adding edge to the songs, she takes away from them. Rihanna says she started recording "Rated R" one month after she was beaten by ex-boyfriend Chris Brown, and her thoughts on that situation and the end of the relationship is the all over the CD. "Don't understand it, blood on your hands, and still you insist on trying to tell me lies," she sings on "Stupid in Love," a melancholy tune that finds Rihanna moving on and asking: "Which one of us is really dumb?"