Rihanna’s new single, “B----h Better Have My Money,” plays to the star’s dark side.
The three-and-a-half-minute song - first teased early Thursday morning through snips on the new ap Dubsmash- sounds like something you’d sooner expect from Ri’s recent collaborator, Kanye West. It’s a shadowy, repetitive, half-sung/half-rapped piece of attitude, more a riff than a song.
The hard rhythm makes the most of Rihanna’s Caribbean accent, an intonation she has often relied on as a hook when all else fails.
The Kanye connection in the song makes sense. In January, Rihanna released another new track, “FourFiveSeconds,” which featured her in a three-way with West and Sir Paul McCartney. That track mined pure pop, with a catchy melody written by the ex-Beatle. Rihanna is rumored to be planning a co-headlining tour with Kanye this summer, a mirror of her roadshow last year with Eminem.
Ri followed “FourFiveSeconds” a few weeks ago with a piece called “Towards the Sun,” snatched from the soundtrack to her new movie, “Home.” A ballad, “Home” went for a cinematic sweep but wound up sounding merely self-important.
The star’s new song may be designed to correct the mainstream image of her last two tracks. That would fit a pattern of Rihanna, who tends to balance edgier songs with grand ballads, and dance tracks. Judging by the teases so far, it’s likely we’ll get a similar mix on her upcoming album, “#R8.” Expect that album to drop just as suddenly as her recent singles have.
No comments:
Post a Comment