1s from 1990 to 2000), a half-decade wilderness period after her flop movie Glitter, and finally a vestigial boomlet driven by the 2005 comeback “ We Belong Together,” which generated a short run of afterburn No. 1, 2000’s “ Music.” Mariah Carey’s career is a slightly different pattern but the same result: a huge ’90s (15 No.
1s in four years), and finally a five-year gap before her vestigial 12 th No. 1s, then a mid-’90s slowdown (only two No. 1s in a tight six-year period then, a gap of more than seven years before Presley landed his 17th, with the classic 1969 fluke “ Suspicious Minds.” Madonna’s chart career is a similar story, with a more gradual decay: six speedy years to generate nine No. From 1956’s “ Heartbreak Hotel” through 1962’s “ Good Luck Charm,” Elvis scored 16 No. For the ultimate example, take a look at Elvis Presley’s timeline. 1 that comes years after the artist has peaked. Their careers sputter out with a vestigial hit or two-a fluky, afterburn No. Most megastars don’t finish as strong as the Fabs. New York Times critic Jenna Wortham has called Anti Rihanna’s “freedom” album-“ the record you make when you don’t need to sell records.” Anti, Rihanna’s first album in three years, is her first under a new deal with Jay Z’s Roc Nation that gives her her own label. This despite the fact that she is, in a way, even more commercially unfettered than Bey or Ye.
No, of the three artists, only Rihanna sought out a huge pop hit. 4 last winter) that he can still create hits when the spirit moves him, but the Tidal-only Life of Pablo is a supposedly “unfinished” album and, like his last two sprawling, racy albums, was clearly not conceived for hit-song generation. As for West, he proved on “ FourFiveSeconds” with Rihanna and Paul McCartney (No. Bey’s “ Formation” single, despite massive exposure at this year’s Super Bowl, was intended to be consumed as a video and a protest-style conversation-starter, not a radio cut it has barely dented Billboard’s charts. But two of the three, Beyoncé and Kanye, have evinced little interest in courting mainstream consumption.
In the last two months, three of our biggest stars-Rihanna, Beyoncé, and Kanye West-have all dropped new material with little warning and seismic impact. Considering how delayed and haphazard the album’s release was, the single’s easy climb to No. “Work” is the lead single from Rihanna’s new album Anti. Built atop a 1998 Jamaican riddim used by, among others, a pre-American-crossover Sean Paul, the sexed-up, blissed-out, minimalist “Work” is arguably Rihanna’s most devoted homage ever to the sound of her island home-at least on a single she wants you to hear on the radio. But those were more straightforward pop-crossover records, with Rihanna enunciating for Top 40 radio. (That fifth refrain is, “When you ah guh / Learn, learn, learn, learn, learn,” and the sixth is, “Meh nuh cyar if him / Hurt, hurt, hurt, hurt, hurting.”) The woman born Robyn Rihanna Fenty in Barbados has showcased her heritage at several points during her hitmaking career: explicitly on the 2010 smash “ Rude Boy” and the minor 2011 hit “ Man Down,” and as a kind of spice in “ Pon de Replay,” her breakthrough smash from the summer of 2005. The savvy “Work” draws heavily upon Rihanna’s Caribbean roots: She sings much of the song in a cross between Jamaican patois and her own Barbadian Creole. Maybe the reason the song sounds so foreign to most U.S.