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Nov 19, 2012While this is a fine, if uneven album, the only way to enjoy a significant portion of it is by taking it as pure entertainment.
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Nov 20, 2012The mixture of emotions across Unapologetic just doesn't sit right.
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Nov 19, 2012Unapologetic is Rihanna's most confident, emotionally resonant work since 2009's "Rated R.
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Nov 20, 2012Even the club bangers ("Phresh Out the Runway" and "Numb," featuring Eminem) are heavy with bass that rumbles more in your chest instead of rattling your feet. Ballads work well for Rihanna, and this album has two of her finest.
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Nov 19, 2012Talk about a mixed message. Even Rihanna sounds confused.
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Nov 26, 2012The art speaks to the album's sound: readily appealing, but ultimately, two-dimensional.
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Nov 21, 2012Unapologetic is by no means a bad album, it'd be nearly impossible to combine the music industry's best songwriters, producers and Rihanna's charismatic delivery and not create quality music, but as an album Unapologetic has no real core, no real theme; unless you count "making hits" as a theme.
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Nov 26, 2012In spite of Rihanna's best efforts, Unapologetic is more depressing than offensive.
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Nov 16, 2012The album is far less defiant than its title suggests, with just as many lovely moments by the piano as there are dubstep-warped bangers.
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Nov 26, 2012Even when Unapologetic fails, it often does so in interesting ways.
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Nov 26, 2012The album itself morphs from Dubstep, to R&B, to ballads, EDM, to Pop-Reggae--and that is its biggest achilles heel. It isn't something that other jumping-genre albums couldn't get over if it weren't for the the fact that it suffers from a serious sequence problem.
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Nov 20, 2012While the new Rihanna record may be at times sonically exciting, what resides beneath the new bass-heavy, Skrillex-inspired music is still a fast-food burger, one with a lot of extra sauce and some very disturbing ingredients.
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Nov 20, 2012When you're at Rihanna's level you can afford the best songwriters and producers in the business and sonically the album is generally far ahead of her peers. Yet if Sia's Diamonds is a sultry triumph, its character and uniqueness highlights the ultimately hollow pleasures of much around it.
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Nov 26, 2012Unapologetic makes a compelling case for Rihanna knowing what she's doing. This most compelling of pop phenomena still has something new to offer.
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Nov 26, 2012Sonically, the first half of Unapologetic picks up on the syrupy Southern hip-hop minimalism popular last summer, while much of the latter half is a grab bag of unwieldy balladry.
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Nov 26, 2012The measurable failure is the album's music. On a track-by-track basis, the songs make for dull labor, not worth our time and not befitting Rihanna's talent.
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Nov 20, 2012Unapologetic's stark, shadowy R&B is confrontationally honest and sung within an inch of its life.
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Nov 19, 2012While compelling on its own terms, Rihanna never seems to figure out that being Unapologetic isn't the same thing as picking fights on the dance floor.
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Nov 28, 2012The now-24-year-old's voice may be simple, but it's distinctive--and as defiant as her album titles.
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Nov 20, 2012A fiery pop album that's unfortunately coated in the icky residue of unearned defiance that has marked Brown's recent output.
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Nov 16, 2012For all its musical value, listening to Unapologetic is a pretty depressing experience.
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Nov 19, 2012Like most of Unapologetic, it's ["Nobody's Business" is] instantly forgettable.
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Nov 20, 2012The music is just as brutish and bruised; occasionally Rihanna shows up essentially unaccompanied, but most of her songs are built tough and layered. The songs that are the least texturally confrontational are also by far the least successful.
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Nov 26, 2012Her seventh album in seven years is all filthy lyrics and crashing dubstep drops: R&B-pop turned up to 11.
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Nov 16, 2012It's a mixed bag.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 496 out of 755
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Mixed: 102 out of 755
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Negative: 157 out of 755
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Nov 19, 2012
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Nov 19, 2012
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Nov 21, 2012