Entertainment Weekly declared Rated R “Best Pop Album of 2009″ in their Best Of issue. Best Pop Album: Rihanna – Rated R – Well, color us corrected. When we first heard Rated R (via a record-label listening session, as with several other releases on this list), we gave it a B. Since then, the insidious pleasures of the Barbadian superstar’s dark, defiantly uncommercial fourth album have sucked us in entirely. From bursts of spiky aggression (Hard) and ragga-tinged rapture (Rude Boy) to moments of pure, naked vulnerability (the Justin Timberlake-penned heartbreak symphony Cold Case Love), it’s emerged a stealth stunnerNYTimes also ranks Rihanna’s ‘Rated R’ as the 9th Best Album of 2009: Domestic abuse apparently gave Rihanna a motive and a narrative for her tough-as-nails fourth album. Beyond a few rueful ballads, most plainly “Stupid in Love,” she sounds armored and imperious. That’s not remotely a bad thing, and neither are the flashes of her Barbadian roots.
Rolling Stone If by some accident of fate, or maybe record-company cynicism, the new Chris Brown album has arrived at the same moment as his ex's. The results tempt a reviewer to talk in terms of moral victories, but the real triumph here is artistic. Chris Brown has made a bland, occasionally obnoxious, pro forma R&B album. Rihanna has transformed her sound and made one of the best pop records of the year.
I have to agree with the critics i NEVER expected Rihanna to release an album with strong lyrical content and mature musical arrangement. Rated R is her biggest release to date even though she only came in at #4, the album is still slowing selling in the thousands weekly according to Nielsen.
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