Send "Rihanna " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 "We found love in a hopeless place." Over a frantic, Calvin Harris-produced, Guetta-meets-"Sandstorm" beat on her sixth record's lead-off single, Rihanna repeats these words almost 20 times. "We Found Love" ranks among Ri's best singles because it recognizes that there's not much more that needs to be said: in three and a half minutes, the line moves from being a great pop lyric to a triumphant mantra to something suggestive of a whole spectrum of unspoken emotion. The best pop music transports you to somewhere beyond words, and Rihanna's strongest singles are all seem to be in on this secret. Need I remind you of some of her most powerful hooks: Ella-ella-ella-ay. Oh-na-na. Ay-ayy-ay-ayy-ay-ayy.But as anyone with a Twitter handle will tell you, these are chatty times, and in 2011, the pop landscape's fittingly caught between two maximalist extremes: the winking theatricality of Nicki Minaj, Lady Gaga, and Katy Perry, and the dribbling confessional-pop of Drake, Kanye West, and (yes, they're more alike than they'd like to believe) Taylor Swift. Barbados-born, millions-selling, armfuls-of-awards-winning Rihanna has found staggering success (23 years old; eleven #1 singles and rising) borrowing a little bit from each of these tendencies. Her recent music videos have dabbled in trendy pop artifice (check out her neon-hued, irresistibly smiley turn in Guetta’s "Who’s That Chick?" or the David LaChapelle-aping-- literally-- "S&M"), while her brooding and personal 2009 album Rated R commented-- however obliquely-- on her public struggles. Rihanna seems more comfortable flitting between these two extremes than settling on either, but her past two albums have at least had some thematic cohesion. The same can't be said of Talk That Talk: Heavy on filler though it's only 11 tracks long, it feels not only slight but muddled, an assortment of half-baked ideas that never bloom. A stitched-together collection of club bangers, sleaze-pop missteps, and mid-tempo inspirational ballads, Talk That Talk feels at times like three different records, only one of which might have been any good....full text |
| Guardian |
| Thanks in part to No 1 "We Found Love", in which Riri goes raving with Calvin Harris, the Bajan artist's sixth album sees her reborn as a nihilist romantic and lover of adult themes. While never shy of promoting her sexual liberation in the past (see "S&M", "Push up on Me"), here she's based an entire album around it. To wit: "Suck my cockiness, lick my persuasion" on the otherwise brilliant "Cockiness (Love It)". Bar this and a cameo by Jay-Z in which he giggles about Beyoncé constantly needing to pee ("Talk That Talk"), the emphasis on loud, clubby production means it lacks the progression of Rated R or the bombast of Loud....full text |
| Idolator |
| Rihanna’s sixth studio album in six years, Talk That Talk, is finally out, a mere 12 months after the arrival of the “We Found Love” singer’s previous LP Loud. Critics have given the record mixed reviews. Chalk it up to RiRi’s hyper-sexualized pop schtick seeming passe at this point? Or perhaps, at 11 chart-topping singles into her rapid-fire career, she’s already upped the level of expectation to a near-impossible level to reach? See what the Internet at large had to say about Rihanna’s Talk below, and let us know if you agree with their assessments. :: The Washington Post ponders Rihanna’s place in pop divadom: “If Lady Gaga is an android sent from the future and Beyonce is a Sherman tank of bottomless ambition and great teeth and Britney Spears is a human vacancy sign, what is Rihanna? She could be anyone. She’s a shapeshifter to be sure, a blur of hit singles and brightly colored weaves. But what else? There isn’t another entertainer in the public eye who seems so remote, so indifferent to its gaze.”...full text |
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