Rihanna’s Navy salutes their captain as she releases her highly-anticipated album, ANTI. A week after the album’s release, the album hit No.1 on the Billboard charts, and No.1 on iTunes in the U.S. and other 50 countries. In fact, just 24 hours after the release, the album was certified platinum, making ANTI the fastest album in history to do so. Rihanna is on a high, and her navy is tagging along for the ride.

 According to genius.com, Rihanna has the most songwriting credits on ANTI than on any other album, and it shows. ANTI screams rebellion, a language Rihanna is not foreign to. With upbeat songs such as “Consideration,” “Kiss It Better,” “Work,” “Desperado,” “Woo,” “Needed Me,” “Higher,” “Goodnight Gotham,” and “Pose” it’s impossible to not be drawn to her unique sound. Her slower songs and ballads, which include “Yeah I Said It,” “Same Ol’ Mistakes,” “Never Ending”, “Love on the Brain,” and “Close to You”  balance the album, giving her music substance and elevating it beyond just club music. Rihanna incorporates different music styles such as Caribbean, R&B, and Pop, tying the whole album together. As the audience listens, it’s made clear why her album is called ANTI: she’s anti-conventional, going against musical norms to put her stamp on music history as America’s pop princess.

The song “Work” has shown to be her top hit from ANTI. Released as a single before her album was fully released, the song was repetitively blasted from radio station to radio station to the point where I couldn’t escape it. The song caused much anticipation for her album to release, and later on, a music video as well. The video consists of two parts: the first part placed in a Caribbean dancehall, with everyone dancing and having a good time. The second part was a more personalized version with just Rihanna and Drake alone, being unapologetically explicit, which makes the video even more outstanding. The video, dropped on February 22, collected a million views instantaneously. Featuring Drake in the video gives the fans a flashback to 2010, when both artists appeared in Rihanna’s  “What’s My Name” music video. The chemistry between these two is still great, even after six years.

ANTI and many of Rihanna’s recent albums show how much she has grown since her first albums, Music of the Sun and Good Girl Gone Bad: Reloaded. However, ANTI cannot compare with the brilliance shown in Unapologetic and Talk That Talk, Rihanna album classics in my eyes. Each song in those two albums was shaped to perfection, being both catchy and meaningful. Although this new album shows promise, it cannot surpass the quality of Unapologetic and Talk That Talk. 

Rihanna has become more experimental in her style of music and choice of lyrics, and has finally found her sound and voice. She has evolved into the complex artist she is now, at the peak of her creativity. Rihanna fans, including myself, continue to anticipate watching her grow in her future music releases.