The follow-up album after Good Girl Gone Bad, the songstress changed her clean image from her Umbrella-ella-eh-eh-eh days and this is the moment Navy began to notice Rihanna's own vision and creative direction away from her label's positioning within industry of making her a Barbadian reggae-pop star.
The album itself was so controversial when it dropped because it was a year after her domestic violence case with Chris Brown. In a few songs the singer mentions what had happened between her and the R&B singer from Stupid In Love and Cold Case Love.
Lyrics to Cold Case Love
However the album's most controversial and emotional song is Russian Roulette, a song about how love has tainted her that it feels like it's a game of Russian Roulette and by pulling the trigger you have no idea who's going to lose first. The video features Jesse WIlliams in which we see he dies at the end with a sound of a gunshot and RiRi gasping.
The album all together has bops all-round in different genres from Grace Jones inspired music video Rude Boy, to the hardcore Rock-Hop in Rockstar 101 feat. the legendary Slash, who is known for working with the late Michael Jackson and the pop-EDM era that was explored during the naughties and its leader will.i.am in Photographs as well as the hip hop bass from Hard feat. Jeezy.
To think at 21 Rihanna had held all of this emotion and productively expressed it onto her album ever so eloquently and raw but, what makes it even more legendary is the execution from visuals, production and fashion! Rated R is a gem.