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ANTi Metacritic Thread - 71

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Entertainment Weekly - 91

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Rihanna’s most intriguing project yet, even if there’s no clear smash amongst its 13 tracks. In many ways it’s her most deliberately uncommercial album yet, but don’t let the low-key THC vibes fool you: every harmony, drum beat, and transition on Anti is painstakingly finessed.

The A.V. Club - 83

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In the end, Anti’s tracks combine to create a picture of Rihanna at her most relatable and enthralling.

Rolling Stone - 80

 

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This is an album that forces us to question the boxes we've placed Rihanna in all along.

 

Tiny Mix Tapes - 80

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ANTI is folk music played in a video-drome circularly projecting a 360° image of sprawling, semi-wilderness on fire as a compassionate, loving apocalypse. It’s a charged bleeding heart of sponsorship and exclusivity thrown into the throat of Yosemite. It’s a white horse galloping fiend-like across the continental divide, with a hoof-print-tire-tread that could pull the land apart.

NOW Magazine - 80

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Not every song is as outstanding as the next, but at points, Anti is incredibly satisfying and sufficiently distinct from her other efforts--very much worth the wait and the bizarre roll out.

Exclaim - 80

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ANTI is perhaps her most complete and confident record to date.

The Independent UK - 80

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Oh Rihanna, it was so worth the wait.... This album shows Rihanna hitting back at anyone who ever said her voice could only do certain things and showing them she can do anything she wants to. Such attitude; no apologies.

Pitchfork - 77

 

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ANTI is a rich and conflicted pop record, at its most interesting when it’s at its most idiosyncratic.

 

Consequence Of Sound - 75

 

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Anti takes risks and disregards convention in a way that only a true superstar like Rihanna could pull off.

 

Pretty Much Amazing - 75

 

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What we have instead is a brooding, oddly sequenced, and scattered collection that defies easy categorization.

 

The 405 - 70

 

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After a three year album hiatus, Rih has rendered her most profoundly authentic and effortless act of rebellion yet – she’s making the music she wants to make without a singular fuck. Anti-pop, anti-album, anti-industry, anti-expectation, anti-perfection.

 

The Line of Best Fit - 70

 

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As a whole, Anti might not be as provocative of a statement as Rihanna hopes for it to be, but it’s still fascinating to see an artist in the midst of a metamorphosis.

 

Billboard - 70

 

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Its muted mood and tempo may be initially disappointing for an artist who's been at the forefront of pop and, often, innovated it.... A closer listen, though, shows Rihanna harnessing the moody, intimate sounds for a novel purpose: to open up and let us peer into how complicated her adult life has become.

 

Spin - 70

 

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ANTI is Rihanna’s first aesthetically personal album, and throughout its disorderly roaming, it remains revelatory in a strict sense; it’s a musical step sideways but an artistic step up.

 

Boston Globe - 70

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With its sense of unease, quiet, and longing, much of Anti is unlikely to grab ears on first listen or play well to Rihanna’s broadest base of fans. But it is an interesting artistic curveball in her heretofore hits-driven career.

NME - 60

 

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It’s not quite the revelatory departure we might have hoped for, and has the rich but unfocused feel of something worked on perhaps too long with obsessive fervour, but it’s also subtle and interesting; an intriguing soundtrack to an era of change.

 

The Telegraph UK - 60

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This, for better or worse, is clearly the music Rihanna likes: leftfield, stoned and strange. It is Rihanna without hits. This strange album, released without warning over the internet for free, may well be a reflection of the fact that not even her own backers really expects this to be a commercial blockbuster. It is more an exercise in rebranding, transforming the hit girl into a serious artist.

The Guardian - 60

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It’s hard to work out from its contents whether in a few albums’ time its author will be back to churning out neon-hued anthems or embedded even deeper into the musical leftfield, because its contents are neither the kind of unqualified success that confidently maps out a future direction or the kind of unmitigated disaster that requires her to beat a hasty retreat.

Drowned In Sound - 50

 

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The only real ‘surprise’ about Rihanna’s eighth album is just how challenging it is, not to listen to but to enjoy. Sonically, Anti is defiantly low key with very little to quicken the pulse.

 

The New York Times - 50

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Anti is a chaotic and scattershot album, not the product of a committed artistic vision, or even an appealingly freeform aesthetic, but rather an amalgam of approaches, tones, styles and moods.

Slant Magazine - 50

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The ultimate impression the album leaves isn't just that of an artist who failed to follow through on her vision, but who never bothered to conceive one in the first place.

The Observer UK - 40

 

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There is nothing wrong with Rihanna’s default dead-eyed vixen delivery--it’s one of the seven wonders of the pop world. But ironically, she actually sings the hell out of this record. If only more of these songs could actually carry the weight of Rihanna’s bid for freedom--a bid that is, ultimately, half-baked.

 

PopMatters - 40

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Sadly, with Anti the intent and promise is more admirable than the end result. There’s a certain dreary joylessness to it that saps any energy the songs might possess.

 

 

More to come.

http://www.metacritic.com/music/anti/rihanna/critic-reviews

 

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6 minutes ago, Liam said:

PopMatters giving it a 40? I feel like the people giving these low reviews are bitter stans who wanted LOUD 2.0

!!

I wouldn't call them bitter stans, but people who want pop Rihanna, to serve them their club bangers

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Just now, McDreamy said:

!!

I wouldn't call them bitter stans, but people who want pop Rihanna, to serve them their club bangers

Well at least all of the terrible reviews are probably done with. It should get a nice score from Rolling Stone. I can see it just pushing past Rated R 

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