nothing wrong with critiquing pop music, there's some good stuff out there (though not all that much at the moment in my grumpy young opinion) and Breihan is good at it. i do think the poptimist attitude gets to be too much though when certain mediocrities get propped up as good just cuz people need to pick something that captures the "zeitgeist" or whatever.
i mean i can't imagine anyone listening to anything on this album and honestly saying any song comes close to "Umbrella" for instance, no matter how big "We Found Love" gets.
this album is embarrassingly bad and the person who commented about "Cockiness" upthread was OTM. then again post-"Good Girl" Rihanna in general hasn't done much for me.
is there any popular artist (particularly of the rap variety) that you initially dislike that you don't eventually end up rationalizing in favor of man? this album is even more boring than his last, and so far as i can tell an "Entertainment Weekly" review of all things is the only one that's matched my thoughts on it.
this is the mopiest mope in all of mopeville. there's a line between moody and plodding, airy soundscapes and this album crosses it pretty much every time. even the "bangers" are hollow, save Just Blaze's beat.
his main producer 40 is someone i think has good sonic ideas but tends to ruin 'em by either burying his drums or making them too sparse/lurching. "The Real Her" is a perfect example of this, whereas Wayne's "I'm Single" and Alicia Keys's "Un-thinkable" are the two main exceptions i can think of, and his best beats.
i kinda wish the fear of being called "rockist" these days hadn't led to select Britney Spears's songs being canonized. granted even though i don't like it i know "Toxic" seems to be one of her supposedly "undeniable" songs even for people who don't take her seriously, but when critics've actually started reviewing her last three or so albums like they're some kind of manufactured genius, there's a problem (that Slate review of her latest earlier this year was the worst.) people're perfectly justified in recognizing that she makes bad, plasticized pop music that's catchy only in the irritating sense without "hating fun" or whatever.
think it's their most consistent album. the sound isn't exactly the same as their last one but it's similar and it seems better integrated into a fully-formed aesthetic this time, whereas the last one seemed more like a conscious experiment (by their standards) that was hit-and-miss. "Paradise" is the only obvious dud for me
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