Rihanna 

                                                  Talk That Talk

                                                       8.8/10

                                                   iPod Worthy

I feel like every year around this time I’m listening to a new Rihanna album. Oh that’s because I am listening to a new Rihanna album around this time every year. On Nov. 20, 2009 the popstar dropped the dark and raw Rated R. Last year on Nov. 12, she gave us the mediocre Loud. And on Nov. 18, Ri released Talk That Talk, easily her most well rounded record to date. 

If you haven’t been alive in the past few months, then you may not know about Rihanna’s lead single “We Found Love” featuring Calvin Harris. It is the perfect club jam and her best song since the infamous “Umbrella.” Harris’ hard beats pound throughout the track and Ri chants “We found love in a hopeless place,” over and over again but you never get sick of it. The song that precedes it, “Where Have You Been” (also produced by Harris) could be “We Found Love“‘s brother. The song offers the similar hard beats and a huge build up and intense, mind-blowing breakdown.

Opener “You Da One,” and TTT’s second single, is a breezy track where Rihanna channels her Barbadian roots. “Talk That Talk” takes some time to warm up to (thank’s to Jay-Z’s sloppy and trying-to-remake-“Umbrella” moment) but the song’s breakdown is incredible; short but very satisfying. 

The one-two-knockout-punch of “Cockiness (Love It)” and “Birthday Cake” bring the album to another level. “Cockiness” is as dirty as you can imagine and viciously hypnotic. “Suck my cockiness and lick my persuasion” the Barbadian pop-queen chants. When she sings “I can be your dominatrix” two things are likely to happen to you: A) You hear her accent slip out and go “dawwww” or B) you get horny as fuck and perform a strip tease to the nearest person. “Birthday Cake,” which is produced by The-Dream, is intended as an interlude and is only one minute and 18 seconds long. But they are a fucking amazing one minute and 18 seconds. So good in fact that The-Dream recently announced that Ri and himself are planning to make the track into a full song. Yes, yes, yes. Why so good? Just listen to it at the bottom of the review.

On “Watch ‘n Learn” Ri channels Beyonce and the sexy song sounds like something Bey would have put on 4. The hooks are instant and everything sounds golden and fresh with nasty lyrics but a layer of vintage covering it. The closing track “Farewell” is a powerful ballad that is surprisingly successful. Rihanna is no ballad artist by any means but she hits things right on the nose here.

“Drunk On Love” samples the xx’s “Intro” but isn’t as amazing as you’d think. Still, the track holds its own but since the other songs are so immediate, “Drunk On Love” gets brushed under the rug a bit. Same goes for “Roc Me Out” - it’s a catchy decent tune but when you’ve just listened to “Cockiness” and “Birthday Cake” things seem flat. The only track I’m not enamored with is “We All Want Love.” It is a superficial jam that isn’t terrible (thanks to this cool wobbly-whistle sound effect) but it’s clearly just filler and the only track I find myself skipping.

Talk That Talk is one of the best guilty pleasure albums made in the past 5 years. It wasn’t what I was expecting from Rihanna (especially after hearing “We Found Love”) but I found myself enjoying it regardless. I’m sure this isn’t what many of you signed up for when following Rate That Album but I gotta calls it likes I sees it. When it comes to pop music many people automatically put up a wall (or put up their nose). Every kind of music has its place and fitting and when done exceptionally well it can transcend boundaries and subcultures. The little album that is Talk That Talk manages to do so without any huge press-machine attached to it. At its coreTalk That Talk is built on the foundation of what makes pop music so fucking good.

Listen to the amazing “Birthday Cake” below: