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ANTI Awaits. ~ Rihanna's extremely anticipated eighth studio album "ANTI" was finally surprised released after a 3-year hiatus on January 27th, 2016, when the ANTIdiaRy website's final room entitled "Anti Bedroom" unlocked and revealed the album. With a 3 year wait, there is TONS to say, especially from big fans like me. The first hears of the album "FourFiveSeconds", "Bitch Better Have My Money", "American Oxygen" and a few snippet previews are not included here, which all works out because hey. It's more songs. Pretty much all 13/16 tracks are unheard cuts, and they all tackle a broad range of genres. "Consideration" and "Work" are both amazing, reggae-oriented cuts, and Rihanna's amazing reggae vocals are spot on. "Desperato", "Woo", "Needed Me", "Yeah, I Said It", "Pose" and "Sex With Me" are all amazing mid-tempo hip-hop/R&B cuts. Although, a couple contain strong doses of aggressive autotune. The Tame Impala cover "Same Ol' Mistakes" is an amazing fit for Rihanna's vocals and eclectic side, containing echo-y vocals and a psychedelic soul/rock production, which is very different for her. Others like "Never Ending", a simple calming acoustic guitar, and the album closer, "Close To You", a "Stay"-like tearjerker piano ballad, are both more simple production-wise, and are absolutely beautiful lyrically and musically. Rihanna's newly evolved sound though is shown off most in the amazing "James Joint", "Kiss It Better", "Love On The Brain" and "Higher", which are all beautiful, laid back, throwback-style ballads. For overall opinion, what makes ANTI so special WAS the wait for it. Rihanna's former "album-a-year" plot produced 7 amazing, unique hit-filled albums, but ANTI is probably her best as far as going completely outside of the box and blowing expectations, which she promised this album would do. The only flaw is this wait also produced a slight disappointing impression too with the fact that the album is noticeably quite short in length. For example, "Higher" was anticipated to be amazing (and it is) but was made only 2 minutes long. Along with a few others, cut at around only 2 or 3 minutes, the album leaves a slight impression of "incompleteness". However, thanks to the amazing songwriting and production, it's very easy to overlook. Overall though, ANTI may lack in "bangers", being more mood-specific than usual, but we knew this was Rihanna's goal. The album takes some listens to sink in, but once it does, ANTI ultimately delivers what it promised. The soulful, timeless, brilliant artistic breakthrough album that Rihanna's career needed. And this is only just scratching the surface of what future album's may have in store.

RATING- 8 / 10
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Track Picks:

Consideration
Work
Woo
Same Ol' Mistakes
Love On The Brain
Higher
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