The Legendary Official R I H A L L A H Thread

[Pebbles]

Cheers is missing something..

[Pebbles]

She sounds great on fading but the song is kind of..meh

[Pebbles]

WOW California King Bed is a monster track! Reminds me of Fire Bomb

[Pebbles]

Man down is just OK..

[Mr. Wonder]

Open any dictionary and next to the word ‘loud’ you will find several definitions including ‘noisy’, ‘offensive’ and ‘vulgar’. If these are the type of meanings that Rihanna wants her listeners to derive from her new album then she has effectively achieved her goal.

‘Loud’ is the fifth studio album to be released by the Rihanna in as many years and it features the red haired vixen doing what she does best – attaching herself to the latest trends in Pop music. However, despite being bolstered by tight production and catchy melodies, Rihanna’s blatant lack of vocal skill and originality causes the 11-track LP to be far less impressive than those of her peers.

Like most devastating plane crashes, the album starts off on a high point with the expected third single, ‘S&M’. Vivacious and enticing, Rihanna delivers a respectable vocal performance while allowing her sexuality to be fully liberated over a mix of synths, drums and a foot-stomping beat. In fact, this song may be her most honest record to date as she belts “sticks and stones may break my bones but chains and whips excite me”.

The only other shining moments on ‘Loud’ include the vocally impressive ‘Complicated’ and Country/Alternative ‘California King Bed’. In both instances Rihanna actually challenges herself to open her mouth and sing in ways that she rarely ever dares to perform. Indeed, these tracks provide rare moments in her entire career where listeners might wish that the production was toned down to allow her voice to shine through as she belts and scales to new heights.

Now ‘Loud’ Airlines has begun its descent and things start going horribly wrong. In true Rihanna fashion, the rest of the album proves to be a collection of horrendous vocal performances and nonsensical chanting, proving exactly how limited she truly is as a vocalist.

Songs such as the sickeningly nasal ‘Cheers (Drink To That)’ and the painfully boring ‘Fading’ confirm that even the industry’s most clever producers cannot compensate for Rihanna’s limited ability as a singer. She unsuccessfully tries to force her voice to adapt the melody of the records, resulting in more painful than enjoyable results.

Yet, the carnage does not end there. Songs that Rihanna’s West Indian roots should have given her some advantages prove to be too much for her to handle. She awkwardly channels her fellow Caribbean native Tanya Stephens on the song ‘Man Down’ which, strangely enough, has a striking similarity to the Jamaican’s hit ‘It’s A Pity’. Rihanna is even upstaged by Nicki Minaj on ‘Raining Men’ who sounds more comfortable on the track than her Bajan counterpart.

When the smoke clears and the wreckage of this plane crash are revised, the main weakness of ‘Loud’ is that it is not a cohesive body of work. The album is simply a collection of singles from which Rihanna’s label can choose to service to radio. No wonder they have already chosen all of the future releases from this record to follow ‘What’s My Name? (Ft. Drake)’ and the annoyingly ever-present ‘Only Girl (In The World)’.

The fact that people in her camp had the nerve to compare this album to Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ demonstrates that they must think that true music enthusiasts are relics of the past. On the contrary, it does not take a genius to realise that singles artists like Rihanna continue to fail to deliver the ground-breaking material that they promise. Her music might be loud but her blatant lack of artistic ability is even louder.

[henrietta.]

I think I'm over this album...I only play "S&M" and "Raining Men" now.

[henrietta.]

The fact that people in her camp had the nerve to compare this album to Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ demonstrates that they must think that true music enthusiasts are relics of the past. On the contrary, it does not take a genius to realise that singles artists like Rihanna continue to fail to deliver the ground-breaking material that they promise. Her music might be loud but her blatant lack of artistic ability is even louder.

I forgot they compared it to Thriller months ago

[William]

Grape Juice is so pressed, it's fantastic

[DJ Y2K Malone™]

Grape Juice is so pressed, it's fantastic

exactly like they are credible but of course haters will reach for anything to down play her

I'm not here for blogs that are worth $5000 bucks to give reviews that are bias when they report on her every move just to start stan wars on the comment page

[DJ Y2K Malone™]

Rihanna and Justin Bieber chillin in nyc

[William]

Looks like she let the Biebz have a few sips of her wine

[DJ Y2K Malone™]

USA Today gives the album 3 stars

Rihanna is a good girl who went bad a couple of albums ago, and she keeps getting naughtier all the time. Loud's pulsating opener, S&M, makes it clear from the jump where she's headed as she acknowledges that "chains and whips excite me." She never retreats from that sexually aggressive tone as she shakes off the dark cloud of domestic violence that veiled 2009's Rated R. On her fifth album in five years, she is on a freaky, flirty, fun trip. The edgy music, which leans heavily toward dance and island sounds, fits well with her less than blissful romantic romps. On more than one occasion, she makes it clear that she likes her men complicated and that they can expect her to be the same.

Eminem puts in a cameo on Love the Way You Lie (Part II), which extends, but doesn't really add, to their earlier hit about a tortured relationship from his Recovery album. Better is Raining Men, a duet with Nicki Minaj on which busters feel the blast of the vamps' ire. Rihanna is not only loud, but full of drama. — Steve Jones

http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/reviews/2010-11-16-listen16_ST_N.htm

Slant magazine gives the album 3/5 stars

After comparing last year's Rated R to Janet Jackson's The Velvet Rope, Eric Henderson ended his review of the album by expressing hopes that Rihanna wouldn't follow up with something like All for You. At first glance, it appears that his fears were justified: Like Janet's last hit album, Loud is a decided step away from its über-personal, melodrama-drenched predecessor.

While that may disappoint critics like Eric and I, however, it's probably smart business. Lead single "Only Girl (In the World)" finds New York production duo Stargate co-opting David Guetta's inexplicably popular Eurotrash sound pretty effectively, but that song eschews the subtle West Indian flavor with which Rihanna and company have smartly imbued the rest of the album. The singer hasn't embraced—or exploited, depending on how you want to look at it—her Caribbean roots this much since her debut, and after hearing the entire album, her "loud" red hair and floral-pattern dresses make that much more sense.

That's not to say there aren't traces of the R-rated Rihanna here. The album opens with an ode to S&M that would make various parts of Janet's body perk up, and the inclusion of a new version of "Love the Way You Lie" shows that Rihanna isn't completely ready to put her much-publicized bout with domestic abuse behind her. The album's biggest highlight is "Man Down," a full-fledged reggae tune co-written by fellow Barbadan Shontelle Layne about a woman who shoots a man (her abusive boyfriend? Her abusive pimp? Or maybe she's simply the abuser). Either way, Rihanna sounds surprisingly agile in this genre and it's one of her finest, most confident vocal performances to date.

In the end, Loud really isn't Rihanna's All for You, but like Janet, Rihanna has always had trouble fitting into one genre (she has largely flip-flopped between dance, pop, and R&B, crossing over in a big way but meeting resistance in the urban market—a problem Janet would no doubt encounter if she were starting out today too), and for better or worse, Rihanna continues to stylistically branch out on Loud. "California King Bed" is a slushy acoustic ballad whose clever metaphor is all but suffocated beneath the song's cheesy production choices, and the same producers fill "Cheers (Drink to That)" with a sample of Avril Lavigne's yelp, an odd choice consdering Rihanna has contributed at least a couple more famous vocal tics of her own to the pop lexicon.

http://www.slantmagazine.com/music/review/rihanna-loud/2312

[Mr. Wonder]

I forgot they compared it to Thriller months ago

Ch...and it didn't even see Thriller's 1893 single sales or its 1982 critical acclaim.

[DJ Y2K Malone™]

I think I'm over this album...I only play "S&M" and "Raining Men" now.

Raining men is my song it has really grown on me I have to hear this song real Loud at a club

[henrietta.]

Looks like she let the Biebz have a few sips of her wine

She betta stay off my future baby daddy

[henrietta.]

Ch...and it didn't even see Thriller's 1893 single sales or its 1982 critical acclaim.

They went above and beyond with that

Raining men is my song it has really grown on me I have to hear this song real Loud at a club

It would shut the clubs down

[DJ Y2K Malone™]

New York Times Review Of Loud

It’s back to business as usual — flirting, titillating, indulging, romancing — for Rihanna on her fifth album, “Loud.” She’s resuming her persona as the party girl with the glint of danger.

Rihanna’s 2009 “Rated R,” on which she shared some songwriting credit, followed the domestic violence inflicted by Chris Brown with hefty, portentous songs that insisted on her toughness and pride. For most of “Loud” she keeps trauma at a distance. The songs, all written for her, are about hookups, breakups and adult pleasures, and they are set in the synthetic virtual world of radio-ready pop. Rihanna is clearly aware of competition from Lady Gaga, the Black Eyed Peas and Kesha, and she’s keeping pace. Even through Auto-Tune, her voice holds its tangy individuality.

“Loud” proffers risqué good times from the beginning. The album starts with “S & M,” a bouncy, enthusiastic endorsement of “chains and whips” that rides a four-on-the-floor club beat (and later the hook from the Cure’s “Let’s Go to Bed”). The arena-rock-paced “Cheers (Drink to That),” with a sampled Avril Lavigne cheering, “Yeah! Yeah!,” is calculated for barroom singalongs.

Rihanna shares the mechanized, chattering beat of “Raining Men” with Nicki Minaj, singing and rapping about an endless supply of available men. Her own moans and heavy breathing surround her in the slow, torrid buildup of “Skin.” And she plays up her West Indian accent in the electro-reggae of “Man Down,” about shooting a lover in a moment of passion, and in “What’s My Name,” in which she responds wholeheartedly to come-ons from Drake.

The beat and the expertise persist through rougher emotional terrain. “Complicated,” a Tricky Stewart song about a romance full of mood swings, has Rihanna trumpeting her frustrations to the dance floor, over synthesizer beats ricocheting through space, a pumping house beat and crackling outbursts of percussion. The Polow Da Don production of “Fading” strategizes with long and short elements — sustained choruses and staccato verses, edgeless keyboard chords and notes that are suddenly truncated — to capture the ambivalence of a failing romance.

“Loud” works the pop gizmos as neatly as any album this year, maintaining the Rihanna brand. But the album has a hermetic, cool calculation until it gets to “Love the Way You Lie (Part II),” her take on the tortured hit she shared with Eminem. “It’s sick that all these battles are what keeps me satisfied,” she sings. A lone piano humanizes her first vocals, and she rides the ascending power ballad to a pained resolve; then Eminem delivers new verses in a spiraling rage. It’s purely theatrical, but it’s also, for a moment, raw. JON PARELES

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/16/arts/music/16choice.html?_r=1

[DJ Y2K Malone™]

Loud review by 'Boston Herald

RIHANNA

By Lauren Carter

“Loud” (Def Jam): B+ After last year’s post-battery detour into darkness on “Rated R,” r & b/pop princess Rihanna is back to her trademark sunny sizzle, with just enough edge and bad girl posturing to keep us interested.

Yes, a hint of disturbia still winds through her fifth studio album: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but chains and whips excite me,” Rihanna scream-sings on the Stargate-produced opening track, “S & M.” On “Love the Way You Lie (Part II),” Eminem returns for a second chapter in the abusive relationship saga. And the reggae-leaning “Man Down” seems to be a veiled tale of abortion.

But it’s not all death, destruction and weird fetishes. The majority of “Loud” boasts lite-pop bedroom jams, ballads and fierce club bangers, as a supremely confident Rihanna pours on extra doses of her barely-there Barbadian accent at key moments and pushes the limits of her vocal range.

Perhaps most telling is that guest femcee Nicki Minaj, for perhaps the first time in her young career, fails to outshine a more established star. On “Raining Men,” a song that could serve as the sequel to Beyonce’s “Video Phone,” Rihanna’s utter cool easily outdistances Minaj’s trying-too-hard tactics, clarifying who’s in charge and relegating the Young Money princess to second-fiddle. It’s a standout moment and the track to download.

http://news.bostonherald.com/entertainment/music/reviews/view.bg?articleid=1296310&srvc=home&position=also

[RaLpHieReBeL516]

lol wht is that review talking about autotune, people need to stop and wtf is a grapejuice he hates on her anytime he can

[DJ Y2K Malone™]

Rihanna Is #1 on Itunes

now if she can hold on to that for the rest of the week she can be #1 on billboard

[kidfresh832]

Rihanna Is #1 on Itunes

now if she can hold on to that for the rest of the week she can be #1 on billboard

I wonder how the huge Beatles announcement will do for her Itunes sales this week. I bet their albums and singles take a big chunk. It is getting a ton of media attention for them to finally be on Itunes so everyone knows.

[DJ Y2K Malone™]

I wonder how the huge Beatles announcement will do for her Itunes sales this week. I bet their albums and singles take a big chunk. It is getting a ton of media attention for them to finally be on Itunes so everyone knows.

I was wondering the same thing too but so far she's still #1 the Beatles singles are charting on itunes as well as 5 songs from Rihanna's album S&M is already #36 raining men #87

[lexus97]

WTF!

Rihanna

Loud

***

by Sal Cinquemani on November 12, 2010

Jump to Comments (0) or Add Your Own

After comparing last year's Rated R to Janet Jackson's The Velvet Rope, Eric Henderson ended his review of the album by expressing hopes that Rihanna wouldn't follow up with something like All for You. At first glance, it appears that his fears were justified: Like Janet's last hit album, Loud is a decided step away from its über-personal, melodrama-drenched predecessor.

While that may disappoint critics like Eric and I, however, it's probably smart business. Lead single "Only Girl (In the World)" finds New York production duo Stargate co-opting David Guetta's inexplicably popular Eurotrash sound pretty effectively, but that song eschews the subtle West Indian flavor with which Rihanna and company have smartly imbued the rest of the album. The singer hasn't embraced—or exploited, depending on how you want to look at it—her Caribbean roots this much since her debut, and after hearing the entire album, her "loud" red hair and floral-pattern dresses make that much more sense.

That's not to say there aren't traces of the R-rated Rihanna here. The album opens with an ode to S&M that would make various parts of Janet's body perk up, and the inclusion of a new version of "Love the Way You Lie" shows that Rihanna isn't completely ready to put her much-publicized bout with domestic abuse behind her. The album's biggest highlight is "Man Down," a full-fledged reggae tune co-written by fellow Barbadan Shontelle Layne about a woman who shoots a man (her abusive boyfriend? Her abusive pimp? Or maybe she's simply the abuser). Either way, Rihanna sounds surprisingly agile in this genre and it's one of her finest, most confident vocal performances to date.

In the end, Loud really isn't Rihanna's All for You, but like Janet, Rihanna has always had trouble fitting into one genre (she has largely flip-flopped between dance, pop, and R&B, crossing over in a big way but meeting resistance in the urban market—a problem Janet would no doubt encounter if she were starting out today too), and for better or worse, Rihanna continues to stylistically branch out on Loud. "California King Bed" is a slushy acoustic ballad whose clever metaphor is all but suffocated beneath the song's cheesy production choices, and the same producers fill "Cheers (Drink to That)" with a sample of Avril Lavigne's yelp, an odd choice consdering Rihanna has contributed at least a couple more famous vocal tics of her own to the pop lexicon.

http://www.slantmagazine.com/music/review/rihanna-loud/2312

[hotboy06]

WTF!

Rihanna

Loud

***

by Sal Cinquemani on November 12, 2010

Jump to Comments (0) or Add Your Own

After comparing last year's Rated R to Janet Jackson's The Velvet Rope, Eric Henderson ended his review of the album by expressing hopes that Rihanna wouldn't follow up with something like All for You. At first glance, it appears that his fears were justified: Like Janet's last hit album, Loud is a decided step away from its über-personal, melodrama-drenched predecessor.

While that may disappoint critics like Eric and I, however, it's probably smart business. Lead single "Only Girl (In the World)" finds New York production duo Stargate co-opting David Guetta's inexplicably popular Eurotrash sound pretty effectively, but that song eschews the subtle West Indian flavor with which Rihanna and company have smartly imbued the rest of the album. The singer hasn't embraced—or exploited, depending on how you want to look at it—her Caribbean roots this much since her debut, and after hearing the entire album, her "loud" red hair and floral-pattern dresses make that much more sense.

That's not to say there aren't traces of the R-rated Rihanna here. The album opens with an ode to S&M that would make various parts of Janet's body perk up, and the inclusion of a new version of "Love the Way You Lie" shows that Rihanna isn't completely ready to put her much-publicized bout with domestic abuse behind her. The album's biggest highlight is "Man Down," a full-fledged reggae tune co-written by fellow Barbadan Shontelle Layne about a woman who shoots a man (her abusive boyfriend? Her abusive pimp? Or maybe she's simply the abuser). Either way, Rihanna sounds surprisingly agile in this genre and it's one of her finest, most confident vocal performances to date.

In the end, Loud really isn't Rihanna's All for You, but like Janet, Rihanna has always had trouble fitting into one genre (she has largely flip-flopped between dance, pop, and R&B, crossing over in a big way but meeting resistance in the urban market—a problem Janet would no doubt encounter if she were starting out today too), and for better or worse, Rihanna continues to stylistically branch out on Loud. "California King Bed" is a slushy acoustic ballad whose clever metaphor is all but suffocated beneath the song's cheesy production choices, and the same producers fill "Cheers (Drink to That)" with a sample of Avril Lavigne's yelp, an odd choice consdering Rihanna has contributed at least a couple more famous vocal tics of her own to the pop lexicon.

http://www.slantmagazine.com/music/review/rihanna-loud/2312

Slay Rihanna!

[lexus97]

Slay Rihanna!

UM SO THEY COMPARE HER TO JJ NOW