Rihanna – Rated R Review

Posted by Michael Melchor on 11.23.2009

No wonder Rihanna claimed she and Brown were “dangerous for each other.”

It’s amazing what having your ass kicked by your boyfriend in a rented car can do for your music.

Notice I didn’t say “career”, because anyone can see that Rihanna came out of the February incident with then-boyfriend Chris Brown a lot better than he did. (Then again, resulting sympathy for a victim of domestic violence would dictate as such, especially in a case as high-profile as this one.) While Brown is selling 1/10 of the concert tickets he was a year ago, Rihanna is about to explode all over the world (again) with the release of Rated R.

Aside from a cute play on her name/initial, the album lives up to its title. Rihanna dug deep to come up with an dark, expletive-laden, very personal exploration of her life and feelings post-incident. The result is far from your typical light-weight pop. Rated R is one of the deepest R&B albums I’ve heard in quite some time, with enough going on musically to keep the attention on her.



Rated R starts out with “Mad House”, an almost-generic introduction to turn away if you get squeamish. Whereas most would use this to further some sexy “bad-girl” image to tempt the fellas and make the girls want to be like her, Rihanna means it. In the wake of her relationship with Brown, hers may no longer be just an image.

Rihanna waits a bit before she gets really raw, however. “Wait Your Turn” is a swaggering, Carribbean-influenced slow burn of a track that whets the appetite for more. Though in the song Rihanna declares “the wait is ova”, we’re still not quite there yet. The build continues on “Hard”, featuring (no longer Young?) Jeezy; by the title, it’s the mid-tempo stand of attitude you’d expect, but she starts digging into what’s happened to her in the last year.

The wait is over proper on track four, “Stupid In Love”. After crafting a catchy opening salvo, Rihanna slows things town to truly discuss what happened. The tinny, by-the-book balladry serving as backing music is almost an afterthought here; it’s minimal enough to pay attention to Rihanna’s outpouring of the way things were. Certainly one of the most honest things you’ll hear in pop music this year.

From there, the music gets harder still – and so does she. “Rockstar 101”, featuring Slash (possibly what gave her the idea for a more rock-oriented stage show) starts out as the typical slab of sexy, “look at me, I’mma paint the town red” female badassery, but takes it a step further:

Six inch walker
Big shit talker
I never play the victim
I’d rather be a stalker


So baby take me in
I’ll disobey the law
Make sure you frisk me good
Check my panties and my bra

At that point, she’s just getting warmed up. With talk of setting each other on fire (in “Fire Bomb”) and playing Russian Roulette (in the lead single), no wonder Rihanna claimed she and Brown were “dangerous for each other.” Maybe “Disturbia” should have been a clue after all.

The album continues to walk a line of danger and emotional self-flagellation in the hopes of a cathartic release. In the end, it achieves its goal; the emotional gamut of a woman who’s been a victim, period, is run here. For the most part, the music backs up her venting and rantings well without being overpowering of, mostly, too sparse.

The 411: Rated R is as real as R&B/pop music gets. There are the typical trappings (guest stars, songs of love gained and lost), but in the context of her life in 2009, Rihanna ups the menace and feeling way beyond what some of her contemporaries could manage. The result is an album that you can certainly dance to, but might be afraid to (or feel guilty about) doing so, given how much of herself she’s laid on the table as a result of what she’s been through.

Final Score:  8.0   [ Very Good ]