When taking a look at Rihanna’s profession trajectory, most individuals level to her 2005 debut single, “Pon De Replay,” or her 2007 worldwide smash hit “Umbrella,” as her place to begin. But it surely was her second album, A Lady Like Me, that set Robyn Rihanna Fenty’s future in movement.
The dancehall “chune” “Pon De Replay” displayed the Bajan icon’s skill to mix her native musical roots with industrial attraction; however at the beginning of her profession it typically left her unjustly pigeonholed by critics. But whereas “Umbrella” discovered her reaching new heights as a superstar-gone-bad-gal, her earlier two albums typically went ignored.
Purchase A Lady Like Me on vinyl.
A Lady Like Me began with a radio hit that sampled Comfortable Cell’s 1981 synth-pop cowl of Gloria Jones’ Northern soul hit “Tainted Love.” “SOS” – and its respective “la la la” hook – reached No.1 on the Billboard Scorching 100 and Dance Songs chart. This properly adopted the sudden success of “Pon De Replay,” persevering with Rihanna’s style experimentation.
Greater than your common 18-year-old
Launched on April 10, 2006, A Lady Like Me proved that the Def Jam star and Jay-Z protégé was greater than your common 18-year-old. By the point of its launch, she’d already adopted the one-name moniker (a real signal of divadom), and she or he would notch two extra High 10 singles on the again of “SOS.”
The primary of those was the Evanescence-inspired “Unfaithful,” a darkish piano ballad that begins out with a “story of my life” opener that manifests right into a story of unrequited love penned by Ne-Yo and produced by Stargate. The second, “Break It Off,” was a dancehall hit that recalled the riddims of her debut album, Music Of The Solar, and featured Sean Paul. A Lady Like Me’s third single, “We Ride,” brings the spirit of 90s-centric hip-hop soul into the mid-00s. Whereas the music didn’t garner the identical industrial success as its speedy predecessors, her diehard fanbase nonetheless regard it as an underappreciated cult favourite.
Outdoors of those singles, listeners get to expertise the truest indications of Rihanna’s rising music persona. Although her follow-up album would provoke the Good Lady Gone Unhealthy section, songs like “Selfish Girl” would lay out her “by any means necessary” nature. Hidden beneath a bubbly reggae-pop association, “Selfish Girl” implies that Rihanna’s keen to enterprise to the darkish aspect if which means pleasing her crush. It’s the underlying premise of A Lady Like Me. If the album doesn’t fairly go as far as the whips and chains of “S&M,” it’s definitely an indicator of what was to come back.
Laying the template for cultural dominance
Whereas her subsequent album, Good Lady Gone Unhealthy, was simple in its titling, A Lady Like Me walks the tremendous line between overt sexuality and radio-friendly pop, as evidenced on the rocksteady jaunt “Kisses Don’t Lie.” The album strikes an ideal stability between the star-making hits that may propel Rihanna to superstardom and her personal musical id as impressed by her native roots and private artistry. For each pop and R&B ballad on the report, there’s an equal quantity of dancehall and soca tracks.
Rihanna wasn’t the primary artist to include patois slang into pop music. Everybody from Bob Marley to Shabba Ranks and Sean Paul had been doing it for years. However Rihanna was definitely one of many first solo feminine artists to do it on a large scale, talking to a whole technology within the course of. From “Dem Haters” (that includes fellow Barbados native Dwayne Husbands) to “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” (which takes its cues from Marley, Barrington Levy, and Daybreak Penn), Rihanna proudly wears her influences on her sleeve and places the highlight on Caribbean music.
A Lady Like Me not solely launched the world to an rising pop drive to be reckoned with, however an artist critical about her craft, laying the template for her full cultural dominance within the close to future.
Purchase A Lady Like Me on vinyl.
