RIHANNA'S latest album, Anti, has finally decided to show up. After a series of false starts, rumours of the project being scrapped, confusion over producers and a blunder at the time of release allowing the album to be downloaded for free on certain sites, the finished product has now been delivered and can be digested at last.
The lead single Work is a fairly uneventful affair – an unenthusiastic hip hop meander through a very ordinary arrangement, laced with dated auto tuned vocal sections and lyrics that won't win any wordsmith prizes any time soon.
Drake makes an appearance but even his considerable talents along with Rihanna's similar attributes can't help to make the single a good reference point for the record.
That's the thing – the rest of the album is excellent and in the main Anti is a bold and diverse album for Rihanna to make as studio record number eight.
She certainly hasn't decided to take the easy route and knock out sure-fire semi-repeats of previous successes. Instead she takes a few artistic strides and comes up with the likes of Yeah I Said It, a beautifully constructed Prince-style ballad that demonstrates her impressive singing prowess and Same Ol Mistakes, a sweeping ambient massage of a track that sounds like Tame Impala with its intricate production and dreamy vocals.
Love On The Brain is another slow groove that sounds tastefully retro, with verses that echo the likes of the great Al Green and and a chorus that you feel you have known all your life – definitely one of Anti's highlights.
Other songs that get the nod on the first few listens are the poppy Kiss It Better and the nicely messy Woo. The vast majority of Anti is slow paced but don't let that deter you from giving it a fair hearing. There may be no We Found Love or Shut Up And Drive but that was then and this is 2016, a year that finds Rihanna sounding both adventurous and highly confident.
FREE AS A BIRD
NOEL Gallagher is back in the studio working on High Flying Birds album number three. It's hard to believe that we're now talking a third solo album for everyone's favourite sound biter and I suppose it just shows how far we've come from Oasis.
If fans of a reunion were still harbouring the optimistic thought that Noel was simply getting a quick project out of the way before reconvening with Liam and repeating history – well, it may be now time to move on.
Apparently Man City's most famous fan's latest record will be tinged with Bowie influences and will represent the next and perhaps most telling chapter in Noel's solo story so far.
There may or not be a tribute to Pep Guardiola on there – we'll have to wait and see.
