June 05, 2007 @ 10:58 am

Rihanna - Good Girl Gone Bad (Def Jam)

Shanel Odum

Bahamian princess in a pop state of mind. From VIBE's July 2007 issue.

Rihanna should have titled her third album Good Girl Gone Pop. The 19-year-old Def Jam Recordings ingenue, who butterflied her way from Bahamian dancehall queen to American pop princess in a few short years, has executed a genre-swapping crossover move as smooth as her elastic-limbed choreography. Good Girl Gone Bad is a creative revisiting of fallen pop compatriot Britney Spears' coming-of-age album, Britney (Jive 2001). And like Britney, Rihanna, in the final year of her teens, seductively straddles the line between doe-eyed sweetheart and sassy sex kitten. But this act of calculated sensuality is more than a simple hiking of hemlines - it's adventurous reinvention. Until now, Rihanna has delivered a carnival of huge singles - "Pon de Replay," "SOS," "Unfaithful," - followed by far less-satisfying albums. But Good Girl is cohesive, stuffed with less Twinkie filling than last year's A Girl Like Me (Def Jam). On "Umbrella," the rhythmic, Jay-Z-assisted single, the sticky chorus, "Um-ber-ella-ella-ella-ay-ay-ay" is as contagious as a beat-injected nursery rhyme. Later, it isn't hard to picture a sea of shirtless, X-popping, Madonna-loving Chelsea boys jamming to the techno-tinged "Don't Stop The Music." Rihanna even coos Michael Jackson's classic tongue twister, "mama se, mamasa...," over the StarGate-produced house banger - she's clearly in a pop state of mind. But Rihanna's strength still lies in uptempo numbers. The few ballads here are the weakest of the bunch, save the Timbaland-produced "Rehab." The lackluster Ne-Yo-penned title track is hardly a window to Rihanna's soul: "Treat us right / 'Cause once a good girl goes bad / She's gone forever," she sings, with a nod to Jay-Z. And the breezy Ne-Yo duet, "Hate That I Love You," is little more than a pretty regurgitation of his 2006 hit "So Sick." Although Rihanna's Caribbean-inflected vocal cadence is audible throughout, she rarely capitalizes on her roots. Instead of the booming dancehall beats of longtime producers Syndicated Rhythm, the production team's West Indian flavor is synthesized with standard-issue urban pop. As a result, the hook-laden Good Girl is 100-degrees-in-the-shade hot - and about as deep as a puddle.

Article tags: Rihanna, Good, Girl, Gone, Bad, Def, Jam 

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