Rihanna’s album is about sex. You knew that. Even if all you’ve heard is “We Found Love” (endlessly, everywhere), you know that the talk Rihanna’s talking is the dirty sort; it’s such an obvious statement that its leading the article is cheap.
http://free-musicsites24.blogspot.com/
Here’s how that happened. Talk That Talk is a big album, and whenever a big album arrives–leaked, legit, promo–every review outlet wants to get something up fast to reel in kids trying to download mp3s or boggle at writers’ opinions, every tweeter needs a tweet, every fan needs something to talk about. But you can’t skim albums like you might skim books. It takes me the same amount of time to hear Talk That Talk as it takes anyone else. So, after a couple 45-minutes go-rounds, reactions must be had, and the quickest approach is to find the obvious theme. Those obvious themes, once committed to the Internet, get passed from reviewer to commentator to reader to listener to everyone. It’s like a game of Telephone, changing it from “a take” to “the take” to “the only take.”
This happens all the time. Watch the Throne will forever be remembered as about being really rich and spending lots of money, not about becoming really rich despite society implying that shouldn’t be an option for black men. Drake’s album is about being the man who’s finally had confessional feeeeeelings and has beats by 40, and about breaking ground with both, despite the equally good confessionalism and soundscapes by others. Lady Gaga’s album, if you haven’t forgotten it already, is only about big-upping her fans and/or herself, despite rivaling Drake for confessionalism at several points. Britney Spears’ album has all those cool dubstep sounds (it doesn’t have that many.) Kelly Clarkson’s album is about hating and/or getting screwed over by men, without nuance and without mention of her return to power-pop.
And Rihanna’s album is about sex. Specifically, it’s the dirtiest pop record since Madonna’s Erotica, a statement that leaves out record stores’ worth of dirtier pop albums than Erotica. Take everything Peaches has recorded (sample titles: “Fuck the Pain Away,” “Shake Your Dix,” “Slippery Dick,” Fatherfucker, Impeach My Bush.) Hadn’t heard of Peaches before this article? Take Lil’ Kim and Trina, who in their songs,, as Chris Randle points out, drop both C-words often and “detail the precise number of times [they want] to come.” Talk That Talk isn’t even consistently dirty. You need the video to give “We Found Love” a rating higher than G, “You Da One” and “Where Have You Been” (an inevitable single) tease PG at most, and there’s a stretch of chaste-ish ballads.
That said, the proportion of Talk That Talk that can be described as “chaste-ish” is tiny. Everyone’s noticed this; it isn’t difficult. The problem arrives when it’s the only thing people notice. Everyone is talking about sex in Rihanna’s album, but the extent of it is “hey, there sure is some dirty stuff here.” It’s not TMI but NEI–not enough information, and it goes as far as the thinking behind Parental Advisory labels and content ratings, where one literal F-word can get you an R rating. But there’s more to the story. Let’s talk about sex, in detail, starting with how Rihanna got here.
This was inevitable since about a year ago.
Talk That Talk might be a shift in persona, and it might even be a provocative shift. But it wasn’t surprising. You could have reconstructed Talk This Talk almost exactly by going to Wikipedia a few months ago–specifically, the singles discography section. Go to the section for Loud, and look for the album’s two No. 1 singles. There are two: “Only Girl (in the World)” and “S&M.” Boom: market research for Talk That Talk. The former explains the presence of club bangers like “We Found Love” and “Where Are You Now”; the latter explains the sex.
As always with Wikipedia, though, you’ll need to cite more sources. Fortunately,-XL Recordings founder and Adele string-puller Richard Russell was quite happy to make himself a source on music and sex. He doesn’t like the combination much, telling the British press that “faux-porn” imagery by (female) artists makes him “queasy”–imagery that apparently includes everything but setting metaphorical fire to hypothetical rain. But Russell turned out to be inclusive; while he had beef with female pop stars in general, the press quickly turned it into a criticism of Rihanna’s “S&M” only. The Parents Television Council got involved, because of course they did. Everyone who wrote about “S&M” mentioned the controversy a few words later. Seldom were other names mentioned; if you read pop writing last spring, you’d think Rihanna was the only artist singing about sex and criticized for it.
Come summer, you started to see something else. That is, you’d have seen something else if you followed gossip blogs–a soul-sucking task I don’t recommend, but in this case a telling one. Every headline about Rihanna began to look the same. Rihanna visits sex shops! Rihanna goes out to drugstores at 2 a.m.! Rihanna gives lap dances on stage! Rihanna flirts with [Drake/Chris Brown/a fan]! Rihanna has sexts leaked! It all makes really convenient foreshadowing, doesn’t it? A couple things could’ve happened. Rihanna’s team–who’s managed every step of the Talk This Talk promotion, down to the Facebook unveiling–could’ve noticed these headlines and ran with them for Talk This Talk‘s promo. Rihanna’s team could have planted at least some of the headlines (unlikely, but not impossible.) Or the headlines could simply be reflections of how attractive a story that “Rihanna + sex” is.
Talk This Talk‘s take on sex can be traced directly back to “Rude Boy.”
Back to Wikipedia, one album earlier. Rated R, as close to the Difficult, Angsty Album as Rihanna’s likely to record unless the music industry implodes tomorrow, had one No. 1 hit: “Rude Boy.” In fact, it was the only big hit, period; while “Russian Roulette” charted in the top 10, nobody really knew how to respond to it except for tentatively saying “Chris Brown” until they felt icky. Although “Hard” got a decent amount of radio airplay, that airplay dissipated in about a week or two. “Rockstar 101″ and “Te Amo” aren’t anywhere near even that tier.
“Rude Boy” is also a song about sex, but a specific kind. It’s no surprise that the beginning synths sound like sighs; for a song about desire, it’s remarkably surly–even resigned. The pre-chorus is delivered like this: “do you like it boy i want want want what you want want want give it to me baby like boom boom boom”–no capitalization, punctuation, or anything to distinguish the words. You shouldn’t have to specifically reassure someone “I ain’t faking, no, no.”
This attitude’s filtered forward, from the bridge of “Only Girl (in the World)” to the talk about Talk That Talk. Rihanna’s often criticized as dispassionate and bored or indifferent. When these criticisms extend to her personality, they’re inaccurate (anyone who says Rihanna has no personality isn’t reading her Twitter or seeing her in concert). But for “Rude Boy,” they were accurate. Sometimes. The thing is:
It’s provocative. It gets the people going!
All that said, the only song on Talk That talk that’s really comparable to “Rude Boy” is “Talk That Talk” (and not just because they sound almost exactly alike.) Elsewhere, Rihanna’s playful and teasing on the likes of “Birthday Cake,” turning desire into yearning, bigger than herself, on “Where Have You Been,” etc. Sure, these might be instructions from her vocal coach, but there’s no way one or both didn’t know intuitively what they were going for.
Same goes for Rihanna’s gender-bending on “Cockiness (Love It)” and “Red Lipstick,” comparable to any way Gaga’s teased the rumors. This isn’t new–even Jessie J did it like a dude, not to mention the aforementioned Madonna, Trina, Kim et al–but it’s still worth note. (And if it comes off as unremarkable, that’s also worth note.)
The explanation might be simpler than either of those, though. Rihanna’s album is about sex because that’s a more interesting angle than “did you like Loud? Well, fresh outta Pro Tools, here’s batch two! Now with more dubstep!” It practically guarantees an entire month of discussion that’ll conveniently keep her in the headlines until she announces she’s gonna tone down the skimpy clothes. It’s a small risk, but if your turnaround time for albums is a year at most, be thankful that some risks made the cut. Now let’s find something else to talk about.
http://free-musicsites24.blogspot.com/
Here’s how that happened. Talk That Talk is a big album, and whenever a big album arrives–leaked, legit, promo–every review outlet wants to get something up fast to reel in kids trying to download mp3s or boggle at writers’ opinions, every tweeter needs a tweet, every fan needs something to talk about. But you can’t skim albums like you might skim books. It takes me the same amount of time to hear Talk That Talk as it takes anyone else. So, after a couple 45-minutes go-rounds, reactions must be had, and the quickest approach is to find the obvious theme. Those obvious themes, once committed to the Internet, get passed from reviewer to commentator to reader to listener to everyone. It’s like a game of Telephone, changing it from “a take” to “the take” to “the only take.”
This happens all the time. Watch the Throne will forever be remembered as about being really rich and spending lots of money, not about becoming really rich despite society implying that shouldn’t be an option for black men. Drake’s album is about being the man who’s finally had confessional feeeeeelings and has beats by 40, and about breaking ground with both, despite the equally good confessionalism and soundscapes by others. Lady Gaga’s album, if you haven’t forgotten it already, is only about big-upping her fans and/or herself, despite rivaling Drake for confessionalism at several points. Britney Spears’ album has all those cool dubstep sounds (it doesn’t have that many.) Kelly Clarkson’s album is about hating and/or getting screwed over by men, without nuance and without mention of her return to power-pop.
And Rihanna’s album is about sex. Specifically, it’s the dirtiest pop record since Madonna’s Erotica, a statement that leaves out record stores’ worth of dirtier pop albums than Erotica. Take everything Peaches has recorded (sample titles: “Fuck the Pain Away,” “Shake Your Dix,” “Slippery Dick,” Fatherfucker, Impeach My Bush.) Hadn’t heard of Peaches before this article? Take Lil’ Kim and Trina, who in their songs,, as Chris Randle points out, drop both C-words often and “detail the precise number of times [they want] to come.” Talk That Talk isn’t even consistently dirty. You need the video to give “We Found Love” a rating higher than G, “You Da One” and “Where Have You Been” (an inevitable single) tease PG at most, and there’s a stretch of chaste-ish ballads.
That said, the proportion of Talk That Talk that can be described as “chaste-ish” is tiny. Everyone’s noticed this; it isn’t difficult. The problem arrives when it’s the only thing people notice. Everyone is talking about sex in Rihanna’s album, but the extent of it is “hey, there sure is some dirty stuff here.” It’s not TMI but NEI–not enough information, and it goes as far as the thinking behind Parental Advisory labels and content ratings, where one literal F-word can get you an R rating. But there’s more to the story. Let’s talk about sex, in detail, starting with how Rihanna got here.
This was inevitable since about a year ago.
Talk That Talk might be a shift in persona, and it might even be a provocative shift. But it wasn’t surprising. You could have reconstructed Talk This Talk almost exactly by going to Wikipedia a few months ago–specifically, the singles discography section. Go to the section for Loud, and look for the album’s two No. 1 singles. There are two: “Only Girl (in the World)” and “S&M.” Boom: market research for Talk That Talk. The former explains the presence of club bangers like “We Found Love” and “Where Are You Now”; the latter explains the sex.
As always with Wikipedia, though, you’ll need to cite more sources. Fortunately,-XL Recordings founder and Adele string-puller Richard Russell was quite happy to make himself a source on music and sex. He doesn’t like the combination much, telling the British press that “faux-porn” imagery by (female) artists makes him “queasy”–imagery that apparently includes everything but setting metaphorical fire to hypothetical rain. But Russell turned out to be inclusive; while he had beef with female pop stars in general, the press quickly turned it into a criticism of Rihanna’s “S&M” only. The Parents Television Council got involved, because of course they did. Everyone who wrote about “S&M” mentioned the controversy a few words later. Seldom were other names mentioned; if you read pop writing last spring, you’d think Rihanna was the only artist singing about sex and criticized for it.
Come summer, you started to see something else. That is, you’d have seen something else if you followed gossip blogs–a soul-sucking task I don’t recommend, but in this case a telling one. Every headline about Rihanna began to look the same. Rihanna visits sex shops! Rihanna goes out to drugstores at 2 a.m.! Rihanna gives lap dances on stage! Rihanna flirts with [Drake/Chris Brown/a fan]! Rihanna has sexts leaked! It all makes really convenient foreshadowing, doesn’t it? A couple things could’ve happened. Rihanna’s team–who’s managed every step of the Talk This Talk promotion, down to the Facebook unveiling–could’ve noticed these headlines and ran with them for Talk This Talk‘s promo. Rihanna’s team could have planted at least some of the headlines (unlikely, but not impossible.) Or the headlines could simply be reflections of how attractive a story that “Rihanna + sex” is.
Talk This Talk‘s take on sex can be traced directly back to “Rude Boy.”
Back to Wikipedia, one album earlier. Rated R, as close to the Difficult, Angsty Album as Rihanna’s likely to record unless the music industry implodes tomorrow, had one No. 1 hit: “Rude Boy.” In fact, it was the only big hit, period; while “Russian Roulette” charted in the top 10, nobody really knew how to respond to it except for tentatively saying “Chris Brown” until they felt icky. Although “Hard” got a decent amount of radio airplay, that airplay dissipated in about a week or two. “Rockstar 101″ and “Te Amo” aren’t anywhere near even that tier.
“Rude Boy” is also a song about sex, but a specific kind. It’s no surprise that the beginning synths sound like sighs; for a song about desire, it’s remarkably surly–even resigned. The pre-chorus is delivered like this: “do you like it boy i want want want what you want want want give it to me baby like boom boom boom”–no capitalization, punctuation, or anything to distinguish the words. You shouldn’t have to specifically reassure someone “I ain’t faking, no, no.”
This attitude’s filtered forward, from the bridge of “Only Girl (in the World)” to the talk about Talk That Talk. Rihanna’s often criticized as dispassionate and bored or indifferent. When these criticisms extend to her personality, they’re inaccurate (anyone who says Rihanna has no personality isn’t reading her Twitter or seeing her in concert). But for “Rude Boy,” they were accurate. Sometimes. The thing is:
It’s provocative. It gets the people going!
All that said, the only song on Talk That talk that’s really comparable to “Rude Boy” is “Talk That Talk” (and not just because they sound almost exactly alike.) Elsewhere, Rihanna’s playful and teasing on the likes of “Birthday Cake,” turning desire into yearning, bigger than herself, on “Where Have You Been,” etc. Sure, these might be instructions from her vocal coach, but there’s no way one or both didn’t know intuitively what they were going for.
Same goes for Rihanna’s gender-bending on “Cockiness (Love It)” and “Red Lipstick,” comparable to any way Gaga’s teased the rumors. This isn’t new–even Jessie J did it like a dude, not to mention the aforementioned Madonna, Trina, Kim et al–but it’s still worth note. (And if it comes off as unremarkable, that’s also worth note.)
The explanation might be simpler than either of those, though. Rihanna’s album is about sex because that’s a more interesting angle than “did you like Loud? Well, fresh outta Pro Tools, here’s batch two! Now with more dubstep!” It practically guarantees an entire month of discussion that’ll conveniently keep her in the headlines until she announces she’s gonna tone down the skimpy clothes. It’s a small risk, but if your turnaround time for albums is a year at most, be thankful that some risks made the cut. Now let’s find something else to talk about.
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