Rihanna - ANTI (January (???) 2016)

I've been more convinced that ANTI is an exercise in how pop stars don't need music to prop them up in the mid-2010s. This long-in-the-works album's first single — "Work," a collaboration with Drake that makes me wonder if she's been taking anti-enunciation lessons from Arianna Grande — is sort of bearing out that hypothesis!

http://consequenceofsound.net/2016/01/rihanna-and-drake-do-work-on-new-collaborative-single-listen/

Billboard is claiming it's going to be out this week.

also drake is so yucky

the way rihanna's voice gets shifted from human to post-human on the pre-chorus is my favorite touch

pre-verse i mean

fun song

yeah i like this a lot.

sounds pretty lazy to me on one listen but then so did BBHMM

that song didn't have drake tho

only heard the snippet but i think it sounds good, if a bit half hearted. and i dont want to hear drake anywhere near it. like this pic though. i would pay for these headphones.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CZknUtIUcAMJb80.jpg

eheh, great pic indeed !
it could almost be the cover of the album...

not liking the song, what the hell is she doing

she's being lazy and it's working for her, lol. The slackness is the song's main draw.
lol @ drake and the twin though.

i think it's cool that she's not trying to make pop music, seems like she's doing what she wants. i think the album will be good but the piecemeal song releases haven't really flattered the project so far.

drake's verse is pretty useless but apparently the "work" beat was created by drake's producers at drake's house and then sent to partynextdoor who wrote the track so i guess drake's involvement in it was a foregone conclusion

I like this song, it feels refreshingly low-key in a way I don't expect from her at this point. Like it sounds closer to an amateur-pop "Drumz" type of thing than a collaboration between two major superstars. Also it reminds me of one of my favorite #RihannaDeepCuts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7mVL78-3j8

Rev's reference point is the first thing in this thread that's made me want to hear this

fun imo. not sure if built to last but eh who knows

shouldve just had mel forde wilding out for a few bars instead of drizzzz obv

nice to hear her drop the most patois ever in her career. "Her voice has a glossy wordlessness to it, but this is for sure some of her most subtle, expressive, and coolly thrilling shout-singing" lol ok pfork

https://vine.co/v/O2bPFqvaJMZ

ahahaha DYING

― r|t|c, Saturday, 13 June 2015 21:06 Bookmark

where your ass was at when we recorded in the bathroom

loll

so none of the singles ended up on this thing #2016

leaked

...on Tidal

which seems like a tree falling in the woods type scenario

ANTI - POPOVERDOSE EXCLUSIVE.zip

lol @ nuno's power ballad guitar on "kiss it better"

i really hope this is the end of tidal, what a disaster

ah man "higher" is that song she put on instagram like a year ago, it's so good

lolololololololololol "same ol' mistakes" is a tame impala cover

hahahahahaha

given how long she's been working on this album i really wonder if kevin parker gave her the song first and then just said fuck it and put it on the tame impala album when her album never materialized

lol @ nuno's acoustic power ballad guitar in "never ending"

anyway "yeah i said it" is a lovely slow jam

the first half i suspect was ruined by travis scott's influence, the second half is pretty good give or take how you feel about tame impala

yeah i'm really enjoying how corny "love on the brain" is

the second half is what i thought this record would be like... live instruments, a much more classic sound that showcases her vocals, which sound pretty great!

the first half is like the record she'd want to sit around and smoke weed to but the songs themselves don't seem to be any good

the first half is like the record she'd want to sit around and smoke weed to but the songs themselves don't seem to be any good

this is a major issue with "woo"

who knows though maybe i'll listen to this again

whoa rihanna's voice sounds like it's gonna curl up and die on "higher"

Not finished with the second half, but the first half has the obvious highlights to me so far. But this is all very good so far.

Wait, Higher is actively awful, literally who told her to sing like that?

assuming she's saying "fuck a tidal" in "yeah, i said it"

why is my favorite song on this 2:13

damn u rihanna albums

her vocals are so good on "higher" that it makes me doubly depressed about the rest of the record

yeah i'm in love with "kiss it better"

so syrupy

This whiskey got me feelin' pretty
So pardon if I'm impolite
I just really need your ass with me
I'm sorry 'bout the other night
And I know I could be more creative
And come up with poetic lines
But I'm turnt up off sess and "I love you"
Is the only thing that's in my mind

You take me higher, higher than I've ever been, babe
Just come over, let's pour a drink, babe
I hope I ain't calling you too late, too late
You light my fire
Let's stay up late and smoke a j
I wanna go back to the old way
But I'm drunk and still with a full ash tray
With a little bit too much to say

real

she's a better drunkdialer than drake

i wonder if this album has any vestiges of Kanye once being the touted executive producer aside from Travis Scott's involvement

"never ending" thru "close to you" fucking slays

like "james joint" "work" and "yeah i said it" fine

the record she'd want to sit around and smoke weed to but the songs themselves don't seem to be any good

...this describes like 2/3 or more of rihanna's entire career?

interested to hear it tho

I'm really into the first half of this album so far, so if the second half is supposed to be better I'm really looking forward to it.

I feel "Woo," and yes the vocal performance is like 95% of it.

I'm already sad about the strong possibility Anti will get bumped from most "best of the decade" lists.

"woo" & "desperado" & "never ending" are not really that great but this is still an amazing record in which nobody really saw the artist's vision until after they mostly agreed it wasn't a good album (guilty as charged)

I wish she'd just replaced Woo with Pose

I wonder how those who aren't into "Woo" feel about "Pose." I hear them as companion tracks -- about equally post-Yeezus and noise-pop. I usually consume Anti with its 3 bonus tracks and ending with "Sex With Me." The abrasive jams feel like a crucial part of makes this record special.

"sex with me" so amazing, but yeah i love all three bonus tracks, they feel indivisible from the record

Totally agree that Anti is holding up really well. I do still feel like the whole, "she's finally made a great album" response she received from a lot of critics wasn't fair considering how brilliant Rated R is. Good Girl Gone Bad to a lesser extent too.

Great album, and yes, much more of a piece than most of her other albums. Top 10 of the decade for me, for sure. Classic for “Needed Me” alone, what a song. Kudos to her and her team for going with that one as a single so early on in the album campaign* (even if it was perhaps half-heartedly - they had obviously earmarked “Kiss It Better” as the bigger hit). I think hardly anyone saw that song coming - in this (long) thread it’s only mentioned once (neutrally) before it was released as a single. I love how people itt are ever so slowly waking up to its greatness, just like it crept up on me back then.

*as noted in the thread, this decision might have been informed by its strong streaming numbers. A case of the public knows best?

(And yessss to “Sex With Me” - I discarded it for the longest time because I thought it was just too tacky. I was wrong.)

Same re: "Sex With Me." Huge creeper.

5 years! i think. either today or tmrw.

Album of the decade

feel dumb that this getting bumped actually got my hopes up for the mythical Next Album

Nothing yet, but there's been plenty of Fenty product announcements lol

the best album ever

i continue to be full of shit upthread as i now love "never ending"

such a bizarre & brilliant album... been putting it on again recently. that kid’s mash up of kiss it better & never too much put it back in my head. the four text remix of kiss it better is also great, could almost be a piece of the proper album

i can’t think of many albums where my love for it represents such a 180 from my initial impressions

she has a new… song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ospQ06jJe-I

co-written by Tems
for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
will there be more? no idea
she’s in great voice tho if there was any doubt

It is basically a Tems song, karaoke'd by Rihanna, lol

"First new song in 6 years" is kind of nuts, right?

I <3 Tems and this is fine, but I doubt I'll ever play it again

the biggest headscratcher of a rihanna 'comeback' single since "fourfiveseconds" (which i'm still amazed ended up being a proper hit even after the initial hype wore off)

i like it but yeah i doubt i'll play it again lol. there's a video too that's kinda *makes jerk-off motion* imo. seems like the kind of thing i could come around to if it was played everywhere though.

i've grown to really like "fourfiveseconds" lol, maybe i'll eventually grow to like this? good singing, tho it feels like karaoke.

It’s no ‘Kiss It Better’

I couldn't give a flying fuck about the rest of her catalogue but the first three tracks of this album are so phenomenal

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MQnZgH0ZmQ

genuinely bizarre song, i really wanna know how this came about. it's got a total of three lines!

yeah this is pretty weird...maybe even good? hard to know what I'd think if I heard it outside of the smurf context lmao

When you have two small children (and a third on the way), you make music for Smurfs movies. Makes perfect sense to me.

the question isn't 'why did rihanna do a song for the smurfs?' (it's because she's voicing smurfette), it's 'why is this so comically half-assed?'

i don't think it's weird or half-assed at all, just a low key jam. it would sound great starting off a big pop house dj set.

i don't even know how to parse this kind of animation based on childhood ip though. this feels like a pretty cursed thing to say but uhh papa smurf is hot.

papa smurf is hot.

^^ post unlocked a memory for me
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGpszfsl4TE

lol

I like this album, still loathe "Work."

i've been listening to only real lies for the last 24 hours so this song is slotting into my brain quite seamlessly, actually

haha makes sense

to me this is just more evidence of the fact that her taste level when it comes to music has finally been elevated to the same place as her taste level when it comes to like... everything else. like you compare something like this that could actually function in a DJ set at a real club to all her david guetta collabs or whatever

also it can't be discounted that rihanna releases perplexing songs for movie soundtracks in order to further perpetuate the culture of her fanbase begging her for music and her trolling them over it

tbh this is more like smurfing them over it

sick track tho i am absolutely deploying it in a mix

🍄

would go hard working into or out of one of those new debby friday tracks

This rules.

I like this track a lot

ilx party tonight, we're jamming this one loud, i'm taking some screenshots of papa smurf for a lil slideshow

having listened again I agree plus want to take mushrooms

Sounds like a post-Strawberry-Jam-pre-Merriweather Animal Collective live jam.

She really stepped up. I mean, she could’ve just redone “Work” and swapped in “Smurf.”

i’m loving the smurf banger

i don't think it's weird or half-assed at all, just a low key jam

otm

Happy ANTIversary to my favourite album of the last ten years. Ten years!

since then she's released the song from the black panther film, and the song from the smurfs film, and a couple of guest features