Here’s a fun game: Put on Rihanna’s catchy latest single, ”Umbrella,” close your eyes, and pretend you’re listening to the dearly departed ’90s R&B girl group SWV (”Anything”). If, perchance, you have an old Pathfinder with a boomin’ system to play it on, even better. Rihanna’s tangy tremolo is unmistakably reminiscent of early hip-hop-soul divas Monica and SWV’s Coko. And while the 19-year-old Caribbean singer’s follow-up to last year’s A Girl Like Me is a meld of many genres — including ’80s pop and rock — at its finest, messiest moments, Good Girl Gone Bad is a thrilling throwback to more than a decade ago, when upstart producers haphazardly mashed R&B with hip-hop to create chunky jeep anthems such as Mary J. Blige’s ”Real Love.”

Superproducer Timbaland was barely a fledgling beatsmith then, but judging from his Good Girl standouts ”Sell Me Candy” and ”Lemme Get That,” he carries that era’s aesthetic firmly in his DNA. Both tracks are built on loping, crunchy reggae loops, the latter sounding as if it were a strangely pleasing orchestration of a drum machine, a toy piano, and a bag of recyclable trash. Accordingly, Rihanna, whose delivery is typically less adventurous than that of stylized performers like Shakira or Beyoncé, admirably stretches her slightly nasal voice to grittier extremes. ”Lemme Get That,” with its monstrous marching-band vibe and smart-alecky lyrics, showcases her newfound vocal sass. ”I got a house, but I need new furniture,” she sings, teasing the words out Nelly-style. ”Why spend mine when I can spend yers?”

As hinted at by the album’s title, Rihanna works with edgier and wittier verse than on her two previous albums. In ”Breakin’ Dishes,” Christopher ”Tricky” Stewart (Britney Spears’ ”Me Against the Music”) provides her with an appropriately frantic romp so she can wax neurotic about a stray man: ”Is he cheating? Maybe, I don’t know,” she wonders. ”I’m looking around for something else to throw.”

Good Girl only goes bad when Rihanna tries her hand at treacly ballads and glum sentiment. Surprisingly guilty are her high-profile songwriters. Justin Timberlake’s ”Rehab” is a joyless overdose of midtempo melodrama. Meanwhile, ”Question Existing,” penned by on-fire singer Ne-Yo, features a bleak monologue about fame in which Rihanna drones, ”I don’t know who to trust.” Such world-weariness doesn’t suit her. Rihanna’s at her best when she’s brash and unpredictable and summoning the spirit of years past — even if she was only in kindergarten at the time. B+

New York Times
Published: June 4, 2007 – By Kelefa Sanneh

“Flirting, but Serious, Kicking Off With a Hit ”
Rihanna’s new CD is “Good Girl Gone Bad,” although that title seems to overstate her evolution: She has always presented herself as a playful flirt. But that’s no reason not to take her seriously. This is her third album in three years, and though it doesn’t arrive in shops until tomorrow, its success seems a foregone conclusion. Last week the album’s first single, a space-age hip-pop song called “Umbrella,” zoomed to the top of Billboard’s Hot 100 chart; it’s the first serious contender for Song of the Summer.

In 2005 Rihanna was a 17-year-old Barbadian with a hit single — the dancehall reggae confection “Pon de Replay” — that seemed like a fluke. Apparently not: Others have followed, including the crisp dance track “SOS” and the ballad “Unfaithful,” a singularly cheerful evocation of romantic despair. And “Good Girl Gone Bad” should secure her place on pop music’s A-list. She has an instantly recognizable voice (giddy enough for teen-pop, plaintive enough for R&B), great taste in beats and a contract with CoverGirl. What else does she need?

This album begins with a rush of dance tracks. In “Don’t Stop the Music,” produced by StarGate, she finds the exuberance in a rather severe techno beat; “Push Up on Me” gives Lionel Richie’s “Running With the Night” a frenetic, club-friendly makeover. This CD sounds as if it were scientifically engineered to deliver hits: There’s a breezy duet with Ne-Yo, “Hate That I Love You,” and three tracks produced by Timbaland, including one on which Justin Timberlake sings backup.

The most puzzling moment is “Question Existing,” a moody (though not unpleasant) electronic soundscape near the end, but maybe Rihanna figured fans would spend so much time rewinding that they’d never hear it.

British Guardian
June 1, 2007 – By Alex Macpherson

She’s not yet 20, but this is Rihanna’s third album in as many years. The remarkable ballad Umbrella, atop the singles chart, is evidence that her strict work ethic is paying off: over massive drums and growling bass that sounds like engines revving up, Rihanna delivers an impassioned declaration of us-against-the-world devotion. The album, however, is something of a curate’s egg. The Bajan R&B star is ill-suited to the swerve into dance-pop territory that dominates the first half. The gimmicky samples and pounding beats bury her personality, and the summery reggae of her first two albums is sorely missed. Luckily, Good Girl Gone Bad takes off in its closing stages: the title track, written by Ne-Yo, is gorgeously wistful, and Question Existing finds Rihanna musing philosophically over unsettling, echoing synths. Best, though, is the Timbaland-produced Lemme Get That: preening and strutting over its languorous rhythm, she demonstrates that she’s at her best most relaxed. If only this had been the blueprint for the whole album.