Longevity in the R&B world is a relative thing. For every Mariah Carey, whose career has outlasted breakdowns, a fickle fan base and countless number of imitators, there are dozens of Tweets and Teiarra Maries, one hit wonders who fade away in a decidedly ungraceful manner, leaving a string of unsuccessful singles in their wake. Flash in the pan, literally. In only a matter of months, a singer can go from unknown ingénue to superstar before settling into their final destination as some Saturday Night Live punchline. 

Vocal abilities aside, what makes one young singer more likely to succeed rather than one of her competitors? Modern R&B has proven itself a get rich quick market. An album a year, every year, one, maybe two singles strong enough to keep whichever aspiring diva on Top 40 radio until the next disposable product comes out, either at the start of summer or before the Christmas shopping season. The pop market is unabashedly cynical, and unfortunately, the musical results are more often than not, entirely transparent, if not thoroughly repellent.

The problems facing the modern R&B album are threefold. The first being over length: did Ciara’s last album need to be 18 tracks long, for example? That album was padded to the point of irrelevance. Whatever strengths it had were diluted with an unacceptable ratio of filler to killer. The second problem is the ballad. Unless the singer in question is Mary J. Blige, nobody really wants to hear mid-tempo track after mid-tempo track. These singers have been designed for disposability, and they lack the gravitas to make us feel any true emotion. More often than not, a ballad’s placement on an album seems more a sign of laziness than anything else. The third problem, and arguably the most difficult to solve, is an overall lack of cohesion. Too many producers, too many ideas, and the singer, the supposed star, gets lost somewhere. When was the last time you heard an R&B album that felt like an album? One of the reasons Justin Timberlake’s Future Sex/Love Sounds was met with such critical acceptance last year is that it felt like a complete whole. Not every song worked, but the album had a progression that justified its weaker moments. Even so, that album was overlong and heavy on the ballads. It wasn’t the absolute success that we wanted it to be.

With that in mind, Rihanna’s third album in as many years appears to be some kind of stylistic triumph. For one, it isn’t overlong. Twelve songs in a little over forty minutes, this arguably qualifies as a gesture of restraint, the olive branch signalling, well, something.

Rihanna is a hard singer to pin down. She started her career as a pop-dancehall imitator, Sean Paul without the Y-chromosome. On her last album she played the role of the cheating lover, the Diane Lane pleading that she didn’t want to be a murderer while clearly relishing her ability to twist men around her finger. On her newest album, Good Girl Gone Bad, Rihanna has thankfully abandoned any pretence of being anything other than the femme fatale. Unfaithful, though the biggest hit from last year’s A Girl Like Me, isn’t the reference point for this album. Instead, recall S.O.S, the Soft Cell-sampling club banger, remember the disappointment felt when the rest of that album was filled out with flaccid ballads. She, or the people behind her, doesn’t make the same mistake this time out.

Lead single Umbrella starts the album off. The obligatory Jay-Z rap is as out of place on the album as it was on the standalone single. This isn’t R&B anymore; this is synth-pop, with a tangible goth edge. This is a turning point, a decisive statement. The album follows suit for the next five songs (whoever had the good sense to sample New Order on Shut Up and Drive deserves a bonus or a raise), with the Ne-Yo duet being the first slowed-down song on the album, and it isn’t even that slow. It might be the weakest link on the album, but again, as far as weak links go, it isn’t even that weak either. And luckily, it’s the record’s only stumble.

This is a breakout album. Rihanna isn’t content to be another Ashanti, to be the generic thug chick on some rapper’s arm. On Breaking Dishes, a Maneater-esque finger-snapper, she promises that she “won’t stop until [she] sees police lights”. On the Timbaland produced Rehab, she sings that she doesn’t “want to smoke on these cigarettes no more” and doesn’t sound convincing in the least. In her own words, Rihanna’s kicking ass and taking names.

In Good Girl Gone Bad’s penultimate moment, the spoken word climax of Question Existing, Rihanna issues her definitive statement: “I like to think that I’m pretty normal. I laugh, I get mad, I hurt, I think I suck sometimes, but when you’re in the spotlight, everything seems pretty good.” This isn’t any old R&B album, this isn’t a throwaway. This is a second-tier singer no longer satisfied with her lot. It would be naïve to think that this album isn’t as calculated as any other out there, that this image is more than that. What this album is, is better calculated, better made and with more feeling than any other R&B album in recent memory.

Twelve urging, pulsing songs long, with only one ballad, an unparalleled level of thematic cohesion, and yet none of these criteria can be an augur for commercial success. The closest peer Good Girl Gone Bad has is RES’s How I Do. Remember that album? No? That’s the level of risk Rihanna is taking here. Quality is not something appreciated by record executives and hitmakers, marketability is. Come June, Rihanna will be facing either one of two outcomes, both more interesting than what she’s been so far. And that, without reservation, I am willing to call a success. 

Release date: 04/06/07
Artist website: Def Jam artist site
Label: Mercury

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