Like She?s the Only Girl in the World

In a sense, getting out of the way is what Rihanna does best. There?s something paradoxical about her: She?s a pop star you almost forget is there. Her presence on songs is, at best, unobtrusive, pliant, less adaptable than compatible, like a chameleon who stays one more or less pleasing color. Extra-musically, she is blurry. Her look changes wholesale from album to album, in an undercooked way that suggests the hiring and firing of stylists rather than, say, some wry, Bowie-style persona shuffle: now she?s a stonewashed-jean Caribbean queen, now an anime fantasy, now a bondage badass, now a Candyland princess, now a ?90s London brat. There?s the nagging impression that her clothes are doing an untenable portion of her identity-building. Rihanna?s biggest headlines came not when she acted out but when she was acted against, viciously, by her then-boyfriend Chris Brown: Rated R, the noisy, brooding 2009 album she released after the attack, carried with it, for the first time in her career, a sense of drama and stakes.

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=1de86ee637313695edc855198fd432c2

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