There's a review of it here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/nov/15/rihanna-unapologetic-review

I've struggled to know if I want to get it myself, which is odd as obviously it's none of my business what they do with their lives. But I dunno... I found 'Loud' a hard album to review because it felt like there was a bunch of songs on here that seemed to be saying 'I still love you Chris and I quite like it rough' and a bunch that were saying 'You fucker, how could you do that?'

http://drownedinsound.com/releases/15803/reviews/4141526

I don't truly know enough about her process to work out if that's an artistic decision Rihanna took, the culmination of having some songs written for her (and therefore being more generic) or because they're the lyrics she wrote. She's certainly credited with being involved on most of her output more these days.

It seems now that maybe 'Rated R' was the sound of a depressed girl in a bad state, 'Loud' was coming to terms with her confusion of the aftermath and this release might be her trying to say 'I'm back with him, sorry world'. 'Talk that talk' I can't quite place in the grand scheme of things.

Long and rambling, but yeah. My point is that this is a pretty fascinating album arc for an artist and I don't know how I feel about it all. We could be witnessing a still young girl basically documenting an abusive relationship and totally unaware of the effect it's having on her.

- - - - - - - - -

We can talk about the music once it's out too, though I suspect it'll be much like the last 2 sadly (a decent single, 2 generic crap ones, a bunch of interesting album tracks but nowhere near as godo as 'Good girl gone bad' or 'Rated R').