The Singles Jukebox

Another US top 10 hit, and her 31st Jukebox appearance…

[Video][Website]
[6.88]Alfred Soto: Good on her for singing brazenly over a whirring beat that Tinashe would have reveled in, its improvisational air a relief. One of the more sonically adventurous productions to hit the top ten in months too. Not much else, though.
[6]

Jonathan Bogart: There’s something operatic about this song. Not stylistically, where it’s clipped and emotionally subdued rather than ornate and emotionally extravagant. And not in the sense that it forms part of a larger narrative — all pop records can, if you squint, but they don’t require context for their power; that’s what makes them pop. Maybe it’s just thematic bleedover in my head from the video, where betrayal and murder, the old operatic standbys, run rampant. But the more I think about it, the more I think I’m hearing operatic structure: it’s a recitative monologue, a literary text set to music, and although where classical Western tradition would go for vocal pyrotechnics Rihanna just lets Mustard squiggle some electronics, it functions dramatically: you “watch” the characters on stage rather than interpolating yourself into the song’s emotions. Or I do, anyway.
[6]

Cassy Gress: DJ Mustard lets the screen door creak all over the first half of this song while Rihanna dismisses her line of suitors without anger, without sass, just with pure, composed blankness. No refunds or exchanges, all sales final.
[7]

Thomas Inskeep: The more Rihanna makes records like this, and “Work,” and “Bitch Better Have My Money,” the more I like her. This is dark, woozy R&B, akin to the Weeknd if he weren’t such a fucking creep, bettered by the fact that Ri is so clearly a woman in total control of her entire life.
[7]

Taylor Alatorre: If only the roiling intensity of the verses carried over into that lurching placeholder of a chorus, this would be a consummate Rihanna single. As it stands, it’s basically a 3-minute capsule summary of Anti, for better or worse. Can we talk about the impact of that DJ Mustard tag, though? In the midst of a spacey, hollowed-out intro, the start-stop intrusion of YG’s ineluctable voice yanks the listener back down to Earth, diegetically locating the song’s drama in the clubs and bars where ratchet music finds (found?) its true calling. Mustardwave is dead; long live Mustardwave.
[6]

Anthony Easton: Rihanna has one of the best voices in the business, and it works well here without forcing the river. An ugly production, which waves vaguely at the now popular minimalism, but is built up to completeness with that voice, provides a complicated landscape that is not quite discernible. Not that discerning should be the goal. Extra points for the stretched out wub wub sounds that sound like radar, the placid anger of the savage/carriage rhyme, when she moves up the scale, and those brief moments she sounds breathless.
[10]

Katherine St Asaph: One of those descriptions that’s stuck with me: Tom Ewing on “All That She Wants“: “lonely like a polar bear is lonely.” I hear that here too: a brush-off sung like a lament, phrased alluringly but not quite invitingly. Which sounds like a bunch of contradictions, but taken together they’re a specific mood: the seductive, strangely warm, hard-to-leave headspace of never allowing anyone close. The chorus, especially, is like that — a little repetitive thing to sing to distract yourself while you’re alone.
[7]

Katie Gill: Rihanna’s voice effortlessly flows over that warbling backing, perfectly chill. Unfortunately, at certain points, that chill is dangerously close to sleepy. It’s interesting that after the powerhouse singles of “Work” and “Kiss it Better” we get music you can nap to.
[6]