Rihanna, "Anti"

Rihanna

“ANTI”

Roc Nation

You can’t name your album “Anti” without inviting your audience to think about what you oppose. So what is Rihanna standing against in her eighth studio record?

A smoothly choreographed product rollout, for one. But perhaps this bumpy path to market wasn’t an accident or a sign of failure so much as an indication of Rihanna’s new approach.

Seen in that context, “Anti’s” chaotic delivery resembles a rejection of the type of careful strategizing that drives many high-level pop careers in 2016. It also looks like an exercise of accumulated power.

Throughout “Anti” Rihanna turns away from the bright, propulsive sound of her best-known songs — “Umbrella,” “We Found Love,” “Diamonds” — and toward production that’s looser and more unpredictable.

“Consideration” is a scratchy hip-hop number featuring the underground R&B singer SZA of Kendrick Lamar’s Top Dawg crew. “James Joint” has Rihanna describing her love of weed over shimmering, Stevie Wonder-style electric piano. “Same Ol’ Mistakes” is a trippy remake of a tune by the Australian psych-rock band Tame Impala.

“Woo” rides a dark, needling groove produced in part by the rapper Travis Scott, whom Rihanna is reportedly dating. In each of these tracks you can hear the singer’s clear pleasure in exploring styles not necessarily keyed to chart domination.

“Anti” is remarkably tender at points, as in “Kiss It Better,” a woozy synth-rock jam about a lover seeking reconciliation, and “Never Ending,” which sets a similar idea over an acoustic arrangement that borrows from Dido’s “Thank You,” of all things.

The album ends with two more moments of radical vulnerability: “Higher,” a bleary retro-soul song in which she’s mulling her regrets at the end of a very long night, and “Close to You,” a sparse piano ballad that shows off her most unguarded singing.

Sometimes the top is the only place safe enough to look weak.

— Mikael Wood,

Los Angeles Times