--- description: Rihanna is on a roll. One year after releasing Loud, the album that gave us the Grammy award-winning “Only Girl (In the World)” — as... title: Album Review: Rihanna's Talk That Talk image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8754eda72635652b/698a90a8db29879047271801/rihanna-talk-that-talk.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) # Music Monday: Rihanna's Talk That Talk by [TIME Staff](/author/time-staff/) Nov 21, 2011 9:58 AM CUT  by [TIME Staff](/author/time-staff/) Nov 21, 2011 9:58 AM CUT Rihanna is on a roll. One year after releasing _Loud_, the album that gave us the Grammy award-winning [“Only Girl (In the World)”](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa14VNsdSYM "undefined") — as well as “What’s My Name?” “S&M” and “Man Down” — the Barbadian pop music vixen is already back with another full length effort, _Talk That Talk_. You should familiarize yourself with these songs right now because you’re going to be hearing them all winter. Recently, Rihanna has been moving away from dance pop towards electronic/dubstep music, and _Talk That Talk_ offers up several tracks that don’t require any remixing to make them dance floor ready. Like “We Found Love,” the album’s first single (and number one Billboard hit) and [“Cockiness (Love it),”](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbJRVufEX00 "undefined") a filthy little track (“Suck my cockiness, like my persuasion” Rihanna demands in the chorus) that repeats a vocal sample so fast that it actually becomes the basis for the beat. **(MORE:** [Top 10 Tunes You Think You Know But Don’t](http://entertainment.time.com/2011/11/16/top-10-tunes-you-think-you-know-but-really-dont/?iid=ent-main-populist-widget "undefined")**)** Then there’s [the album’s title track](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8FarCnm1mE "undefined"), a spirited hip-hop song with a pop hook that reunites Rihanna and Jay-Z (the two appeared on her 2007 hit, “Umbrella”). Hova delivers ambling verses laced with double entendres and funny quips, including the very bizarre sexual reference, “\[I\] had it by her bladder, she’s like ‘Oh I gotta pee!’”On first listen, the line will make you pause — “Did Jay-Z just rap about going the bathroom?” — but actually, it’s just indicative of how much fun he appears to be having. You can almost hear him laughing as he says it. Elsewhere in the song he tells us he’s “flying out to Pisa just to get some pizza,” a line that sounds like something the Beastie Boys, not Jay-Z, would write. There are a few exceptions to _Talk That Talk’s_ dancehall sound: “Watch and Learn” leaves the Euro club scene in favor of a reggae-influenced drum beat while “Farewell” is the obligatory torch ballad that every female pop singer is required to include on an album these days. Most of _Talk’s_ 11 tracks deal with love (or some lusty form of it, anyway). There’s “We Found Love,” as well as “We All Want Love,” “Drunk on Love” and the slightly less direct, “You Da One” and “Roc Me Out,” (which includes the lyric, “I’ll let you in on a dirty little secret, I just want to be loved”). But Rihanna’s love is an obsessive sort. She doesn’t want to be your soulmate the way Beyoncé does. She doesn’t feel all giddy inside the way Katy Perry claims you make her feel. Instead, Rihanna equates love to feelings of drunkenness and uncontrollable addiction — the stuff of tragedy. She’s more akin to Lady Gaga in that sense. But there’s one big difference: Gaga seeks out emotional destruction while Rihanna seems to stumble into it. It’s difficult to write about this without mentioning Rihanna’s ex-boyfriend, Chris Brown. For the past three years, every song she’s put out has been assessed in relation to her [harrowing 2009 assault](http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1945379%5F1944796%5F1944795,00.html "undefined") by Brown. I worry that by repeatedly mentioning the incident, we make it harder for her to publicly move on. But Brown’s assault was truly vicious and it’s something that the singer seems to be working through in her songs. Rihanna’s first two albums after the assault, 2009’s _Rated R_ and last year’s _Loud_, both contained darker, angrier songs such as “Rude Boy” and “Man Down,” in which she confesses to killing a man who assaulted her. (And don’t forget her domestic violence duet with Eminem, [“Love the Way You Lie”](http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2035319%5F2034688%5F2034658,00.html "undefined")). So I’m happy to report that _Talk That Talk_ is much more lighthearted than her previous efforts. It’s not completely carefree — [have you _seen_ the video for “We Found Love?” ](http://entertainment.time.com/2011/10/20/rihannas-we-found-love-video/ "undefined")— but at least she doesn’t sing about murdering anyone, anymore. And in fact, “We All Want Love” is offers a glimpse of true romantic optimism. Rihanna still doesn’t trust many people, but at least she’s opening herself up again to the possibility. **LIST:** [**The All-TIME 100 Songs**](http://entertainment.time.com/2011/10/24/the-all-time-100-songs/?iid=ent-main-feature "undefined") **LIST:** [**The 30 All-TIME Best Music Videos**](http://entertainment.time.com/2011/07/28/the-30-all-time-best-music-videos/ "undefined") ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7124989/music-monday-rihannas-talk-that-talk/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7124989/music-monday-rihannas-talk-that-talk/"},"headline":"Music Monday: Rihanna's Talk That Talk","datePublished":"2011-11-21T09:58:22.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-16T06:45:16.375Z","description":"Rihanna is on a roll. One year after releasing Loud, the album that gave us the Grammy award-winning “Only Girl (In the World)” — as...","url":"https://time.com/archive/7124989/music-monday-rihannas-talk-that-talk/","keywords":["Rihanna"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8754eda72635652b/698a90a8db29879047271801/rihanna-talk-that-talk.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"TIME Staff","url":"https://time.com/author/time-staff/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8754eda72635652b/698a90a8db29879047271801/rihanna-talk-that-talk.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Rihanna Talk That Talk","caption":"","creditText":"","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/archive/7124989/music-monday-rihannas-talk-that-talk/","name":"Music Monday: Rihanna's Talk That Talk"}}]}] ```