Loud, in context
For those who weren’t there, I don’t think I can undersell just how horrific it was to see the images of Rihanna’s face, covered in wounds and bruises, following Chris Brown’s attack of her in February of 2009. She was not yet 21 and arguably the biggest pop star in the world. In an era defined by tabloid invasiveness, for TMZ to buy those images, and news outlets to run them, was a new rock bottom. For the singer herself, it signalled a necessary and swift persona change.
The new album, Rated R (2009), developed quickly and dealt with an edgier, angrier Rihanna. She sat down for an interview with Diane Sawyer where she discussed returning to Brown after the abuse and leaving again. Her story wasn’t her own and she became a public face for survivors, a clear shift from the more standard pop girl she had previously been. Eventually, everyone moved one and then we got Loud.
That’s the narrative that’s generally accepted about the incident, but I think it misses so much of the nuance surrounding what happened. Most accounts leave out the harassment and online speculation as to what she did to deserve such a reaction from Brown. His fans, many female, blamed her for his violence. Her ongoing relationship with him, continuing on years afterwards, didn’t help quiet anyone. Everything about her integrity and character was questioned and dismissed by those happy to tear down a woman who months prior had been all over the news for being abused. Her words against returning to him in the Sawyer interview were treated as weapons to show she was weak when she did the contrary.
That entire era now feels completely disconnected from where she is today.
When we think about Rihanna as a star, we think of attitude. She’s above any and all drama, having transitioned from “savage clapbacks” to a generally silent approach with some small nods of acknowledgement in interviews. Her Twitter and Instagram presence in 2012-2015 is the foundation to every pop star’s overly familiar and often pathetic attempts to create the parasocial bonds that came naturally to @badgalriri. She tried to meet the public where it was in 2009 and all that got her was a lot of headaches.
Loud (2010) and the accompanying era was a shedding of that discourse. The music is, for the most part, separated from her as an actual person. Her look was different, and her new sound was fun. In many ways, she laid the foundation for the Rihanna we know now to emerge.
You can see the pathway to Loud in the second batch of singles for Rated R, particularly one. The first three were dark, angry, and confrontational. Russian Roulette was the only chart success, but even then, for a lead single of Rihanna’s to barely crack the top 10 feels wrong. Hard and Wait Your Turn did significantly worse. For another pop star, this is where the campaign would have ended. Instead, come February, we get Rude Boy.
Rude Boy is irreverent, fun, stupid, catchy, and completely devoid of difficult subtext. Yes, there’s some iffy lines about rough sex, but outside of a few sideways glances, nobody cared. A hit was a hit, and a lesson was learned. The public did not want Rihanna to be an abuse advocate, they wanted her to sing some pop songs. Rockstar 101 and Te Amo attempted to meet that demand, but the public wanted something lighter.
She definitely gave us that.
It’s weird to say, but I think Loud may be the album that is most contentious amongst Rihanna fans. The reason being a clear demographic divide. On one hand, some uphold it as her last true “pop” album. Her version of Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream (2010). The sound is bright, the hooks are catchy, and the aesthetics are defined and clear. The red hair, golden lighting and soft pinks that surround her in every promotional image for this era are undeniable. Rihanna had always had a talent for aesthetics, from the club girl with a desperate edge of Good Girl Gone Bad (2007), to the switch into an apocalyptic-military fashion doll for Rated R. Loud took her back to the sunshine and flowers, literally.
But for the contingent that dislikes the album disliked the music. Yes, she’s beautiful, but the sounds themselves are dated. Unlike a Teenage Dream, Loud lacks propulsion and feels more like a collection of unrelated songs - much like a standard Katy Perry album. She’s not quite phoning it in, but it’s dated. Her more interesting work later stepped away from bubblegum, but this is the most sterile her music ever sounded.
I stand firmly in the middle of this drama. The songs that work are classics to me. There’s a reason so many hits came out of this record. I can still struggle belt along to California King Bed, What’s My Name contains my favourite Drake verse, and even an album track like Skin is one her best. But there’s as many duds. If I wanted to hear a Canadian teenager yelp in 2010, I’d be listening to Justin Bieber, so the Avril Lavigne sample on Cheers (Drink To That) annoys me. The Nicki Minaj collaboration on Raining Men sounds like a car crash, although I’m surprised the hyperpop community hasn’t reclaimed it yet.
It's easy to see what the people who don’t like the record are saying. It is disjointed. In no universe is there a narrative connection between S&M, Man Down and Love The Way You Lie Pt.2. This is just a collection of songs at the end of the day. But it’s also a clear and effective PR move by a pop star who had just spent the last year grappling with a public abuse event.
The one moment from the era that I think most defines where she and pop culture was in 2010 and 2011 was the S&M remix with Britney Spears. On Rihanna’s side, a song explicitly about sadomasochistic sex barely 2 years out from the incident was a ballsy move that signalled more than anything else that she was done discussing or even acknowledging it as part of her story. While there’s obvious something sadly ironic in Britney singing on a song about sex that mimics abuse, she was at a career peak. Here, the two incredibly famous women came together to release a song that should have rang alarm bells in the public’s minds. Instead it hit number one.
Rihanna was the defining pop artist of my youth. Yes, I did say was, because in 2022, 6 years, a baby and a billion-dollar empire between us and Anti (2016), I feel safe saying she’s probably gone for good. Or at least will never come back as the pop culture force that she once was. Which seems to have been the goal – she has ascended past music.
But back in the days when the We Ride songstress was walking up and down a stage with Eminem, she was an undeniable force. 14 number one singles, hits on hits, countless imitators. The very sound of 2010s radio was seemingly built to support her strengths as a performer, and where she wasn’t heard, she was felt. The drowsiness of the second half of the decade can be linked to her laid-back performance style. She even had Selena Gomez singing in an accent on her first big solo hit. Which was weird, but not even Gomez counts that album in her canon for some reason.
But before that pop culture domination, there was Loud (2010). A necessary step towards being the pop star who gave us Unapologetic (2012) and Anti (2016). I will always be grateful for that and stand beside her in however she needs to deal with her own trauma.