While Taylor Swift is assembling her squad, turning friendship into a competitive exercise dressed up as feminist wholesomeness, Rihanna is partying at carnival, metaphorically knocking the schoolbooks out of Swift’s arms in the high school hallway en route to rolling a spliff at the back of biology class. It’s this brashness combined with pop omnipresence that makes Rihanna such an exciting pop star. The most refreshing thing about her is the apparent zero f***s she gives. And that’s not to mention her collaborations on other singles, Run This Town, Love the Way You Lie, All of the Lights and The Monster, all of which have all given her hip-hop cred. Her songs have solidified her as one of the biggest hitters in the modern pop songbook, Umbrella, Disturbia, Rude Boy, ‘Only Girl (in the World), What’s My Name?, S&M, We Found Love, Diamonds, Stay, Pour It Up and Bitch Better Have My Money especially. She’s had 13 number ones in the US Billboard Hot 100, the same as Michael Jackson. Rihanna epitomises a singles artist, with 58 to her name. But who cares, right? The album’s here! A new Rihanna record! Press play. It’s especially hard to maintain exclusivity when the album was seemingly accidentally posted on Tidal on the eve of its release, downloaded and leaked. Who cares about a Samsung marketing exercise? No one, apart from Samsung. Anti was released through the streaming service Tidal (although anyone can download it), with Samsung footing the bill for free downloads, as part of a reported $25 million contract Rihanna has signed with the company to promote both their products and her upcoming tour.īut fans don’t care how an album is released. When it comes to making album deals with phone companies, Jay-Z learned the hard way with Magna Carta Holy Grail, hooking up with Samsung to release the record first for fans with Samsung phone hardware. While not as big a promotional and marketing car crash as Madonna’s disastrous Rebel Heart, the tedious teasing on the album’s website failed to compel. The release of Anti was preceded by a sloppy campaign. On Thursday, Rihanna’s latest album Anti didn’t explode into the popular conscience, it petered. It must be an event that encompasses pop culture pulse-pushing and marketing genius, as well visually compelling, and monopolise the charts and the radio. It is now not enough for an A-list artist to release an album. The next year, she issued her fifth album, Loud.It’s over two years since Beyoncé’s fourth eponymous album set a precedent for contemporary pop records going beyond a few singles and filler, with the singer assembling an army of producers and contributors to knock it out of the park. She continued in this direction with 2007's Good Girl Gone Bad, which featured the infectious singles "Umbrella" and "Shut Up and Drive." In early 2009, she was assaulted by then-boyfriend Chris Brown en route to a pre-Grammys party that November, she released Rated R, a highly personal album with an unmistakable darkness. Though Rihanna had basically moved away from dancehall, she was moving toward a new aesthetic that married R&B, synth-pop and hip-hop. The single, which sampled Soft Cell's "Tainted Love," was one of the most critically acclaimed and commercially popular songs of that year. But her big break came in 2006 with the release of the single "S.O.S." and the subsequent album A Girl Like Me. The singer's first single, "Pon de Replay," was released in June 2005, with the full album Music of the Sun dropping a month later. She was discovered by producer Evan Rogers during his island visit in 2003, and went on to impress Def Jam CEO Jay-Z so much that he grabbed her for a multi-album contract. Talent and a dose of good luck got Barbados-born Rihanna signed to Def Jam when she was 16 years old.
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