Robyn Rihanna Fenty was born in Barbados in 1988, the daughter of an accountant and a warehouse supervisor. But when American producer Evan Rogers discovered Rihanna and brought the teen singer to the attention of Jay-Z, then president and CEO of Def Jam Recordings, she began a rapid ascent to multiplatinum success. Rihanna’s 2005 single “Pon De Replay” and her debut album Music of the Sun quickly established her as a dancehall crossover star, and over the next few years pop smashes like “Umbrella” and “SOS” made her into a global icon.
Rihanna was a relentless force in her early career, releasing eight albums in the span of 11 years that spun off inescapable songs like “Only Girl (In the World),” “Take a Bow,” “Diamonds,” “Needed Me,” and “Rude Boy.” Fourteen of Rihanna’s singles have reached No. 1 on the Hot 100, a feat surpassed only by the Beatles, Mariah Carey, and Elvis Presley. Rihanna has taken an extended break from music since 2016, starting a family with rapper A$AP Rocky and focusing on very profitable ventures such as her cosmetics brand Fenty Beauty and lingerie line Savage X Fenty. But it still feels like we’re living in Rihanna’s world, and fans eagerly await the day she releases more than a stray soundtrack single.
Music of the Sun was released on August 29, 2005. Where does it rank in one of the most popular catalogs of the last two decades?
8. A Girl Like Me (2006)
“SOS” was Rihanna’s first No. 1 hit, and her first single that didn’t have a trace of Caribbean music outside of the unmistakable lilt in her voice, built on both a sample of Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love” and a clever assortment of lyrical references to other ’80s synth pop hits. A Girl Like Me’s other attempts to diversify or Americanize Rihanna’s sound are hit-and-miss, though, including the drab piano ballad “Unfaithful,” still probably her worst Top Ten single. One of Rihanna’s first writing credits was on “Kisses Don’t Lie,” a feisty guitar-driven track that would’ve sounded at home on a No Doubt album.
7. Music of the Sun (2005)
Rihanna was just 17 years old when “Pon De Replay” rocketed up the charts. But Music of the Sun’s only other single, the bright and bubbly banger “If It’s Lovin’ That You Want,” stalled at No. 36 on the Hot 100, and for the only time in her career, it briefly appeared like Rihanna might be a mere one-hit wonder. The dancehall genre was at the height of its pop crossover era in 2005, and Def Jam loaded Music of the Sun up with Jamaican guests (Vybz Kartel, Elephant Man, and J-Status). Even then, though, Rihanna was singing over glossy Americanized variations on Caribbean styles rather than Lenky Marsden riddims. “At fifty-two minutes, Rihanna’s debut overstays its welcome, but the single justifies plenty of replays,” Barry Walters wrote in the Rolling Stone review of Music of the Sun.
6. Loud (2010)
On paper, Loud looks like it could be Rihanna’s Thriller, spinning off an endless hit parade of seven hit singles, three of them topping the Hot 100. The aptly titled Loud tends to get a little grating, though, from the braying Avril Lavigne loop on “Cheers (Drink To That)” to the glut of post-Gaga dance pop styles. And there’s just no connecting thread as the album leaps from the adult contempo balladry of “California King Bed” to the only reggae track, the murder tale “Man Down.” Rihanna’s massive Eminem collaboration “Love the Way You Lie” and the sequel to the song that closes Loud haven’t aged well, partly because of the dreary production, and partly because of the Eminem demo that leaked in 2019 featuring the rapper tastelessly mocking Rihanna and Chris Brown’s domestic violence incident.
5. Unapologetic (2012)
Rihanna and Chris Brown sang together several times throughout their controversial on-again-off-again relationship from 2008 to 2013, and none of those duets or remixes is really essential to either singer’s catalog. The last song they made together, however, is easily their best, the lithe and funky Unapologetic track “Nobody’s Business.” Unapologetic also features two great collaborations with Atlanta hip-hop hitmakers, “Loveeeeeee Song” featuring Future and the Mike WiLL Made It-produced “Pour It Up.” “Stay” is a moving piano ballad that shows how much Rihanna had grown as a vocalist since “Unfaithful.” But then, the album also subjects you to Eminem saying “I’m the butt police” over a dubstep beat on “Numb.” “Unapologetic rubs our faces in the inconvenient, messy truth of Rihanna’s life,” Jessica Hopper wrote in the Pitchfork review of the album.
4. Good Girl Gone Bad (2007)
Songwriter Terius “The-Dream” Nash and producer Christopher “Tricky” Stewart knew when they wrote “Umbrella” that it was the smash that would change their lives, but the song was offered to both Britney Spears and Mary J. Blige before it wound up as Rihanna’s signature song. The-Dream and Tricky Stewart didn’t write any of the several other singles from Good Girl Gone Bad, but “Breakin’ Dishes” is by far her most popular deep cut today. Parts of Good Girl Gone Bad, which is seven times platinum, sound a little dated now, but Rihanna’s first four-on-the-floor dance track “Don’t Stop the Music” could have been a hit at just about any point since 2007.
3. Anti (2016)
The original 2015 plan for Rihanna’s eighth album included Kanye West as executive producer, and West-produced singles like the acoustic Paul McCartney collaboration “FourFiveSeconds” and the vengeful club banger “Bitch Better Have My Money.” When Anti arrived a year later, though, those songs had been dropped and West’s name was absent from the credits. Instead, Rihanna took charge creatively like never before, co-writing every song except a surprising cover of “Same Ol’ Mistakes” by the Australian psych rock project Tame Impala. Anti reflects the moody, omnivorous new wave of R&B that came into vogue in the 2010s, with ascendant collaborators like SZA, The Weeknd, James Fauntleroy, and PartyNextDoor, who co-wrote the chart-topping Drake collaboration “Work.” Rihanna had been one of the biggest singers in the world for years, but Anti is the album that made her perhaps music’s coolest superstar. “There was always a certain mischief tugging at and incorporated into Rihanna’s resolutely commercial packaging, and now that mischief — girlish, idiosyncratic, teasing — has become the packaging itself,” Jia Tolentino wrote in the SPIN review of Anti.
2. Talk That Talk (2011)
“We Found Love” featuring Scottish dance producer Calvin Harris topped the Hot 100 for 10 weeks, surpassing “Umbrella” as the biggest chart hit of Rihanna’s career. Most of Rihanna’s albums have a certain trial-and-error mix of styles, but Talk That Talk is a smoothly sequenced mix that alternates between EDM, reggae, and southern rap beats without any jarring transitions. And “Watch n’ Learn” and “You da One” fuse Caribbean sounds with American pop more seamlessly than just about anything in her catalog. “This is pop without shame–her hookiest and most dance-targeted album, decorated with a thoughtful assortment of suitably titillating blats, noodles, dubs, groans, hiccups, boom-booms, cut-ups, speed-ups, xx samples, and spoken-word bits,” Robert Christgau wrote in the MSN Music review of Talk That Talk.
1. Rated R (2009)
Instead of merely following up the blockbuster success of Good Girl Gone Bad, Rihanna’s fourth album became a high pressure turning point, her first album after boyfriend Chris Brown’s arrest for assaulting her in February 2009. At the end of that year, Rihanna previewed Rated R with the darker palette of the haunting lead single “Russian Roulette,” the braggadocious Jeezy collaboration “Hard,” and the thudding electronics of “Wait Your Turn.” Instead of a complete reboot, though, Rated R ultimately presented a wide spectrum of sounds, including the sexy pop reggae smash “Rude Boy,” the Latin pop of “Te Amo,” and the brooding Justin Timberlake-penned epic “Cold Case Love.” Emotionally and vocally, Rated R showed that Rihanna had an expressive range that her first three albums had only occasionally hinted at.
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