Rihanna – Anti 2LP For Sale

It’s not crammed with bloodthirsty, dance-oriented jams and feels distinctly smaller, more inward-facing than her previous records, as if it were intended as a kind of spiritual stock-taking, a moment of reckoning for both Rihanna and her fans. Her grainy, mesmerizing voice is paramount here, the sun in ANTI’s universe, the thing everything else orbits: I got to do things my own way, darling, she announces over a stuttering, distorted beat in opener Consideration, a prickly collaboration with the R&B singer SZA. The sentiment feels deliberately placed, meant as a way to read everything that follows.