My Favorite R&B Artists, Vol. 3 | Rihanna


She's one of the highest selling artists of all time, yet she's still so underrated.

I first saw Rihanna on the Tyra Banks show way back in 2005 when I was cleaning up my room. It was her first single and after going back to look at the performance you could tell she was nervous being up on that stage. Well fast forward eleven years later and about 200 million records world wide and you have this woman who's grown into fame without relatively any large bumps in the road. She's largely manage to grow up in an industry that usually ruins young talents and she's made it by being her own person.

I know a lot of people find this pick surprising given my stance on R&B music as a whole. While you she's classified as a pop artist, I decided to call an audible because after listening to her albums, she sounds more R&B than anything to me. I'm not going to sit here and lie to you by saying that I've listened to every single album that she's come out with, because I haven't. I didn't really catch on til her 2009 album Rated R, which I thought was alright at best. I actually skipped over Loud as well because that wasn't an album for straight men to like that much anyways. Same thing can be said for Talk That Talk.

It wasn't until 2012's Unapologetic that I was completely sold on Rihanna as an artist.

I knew I threw her up there with the artists that I liked to hear the moment Diamonds came out. A song dedicated to her grandmother and it was as heartfelt as humanly possible. Then came the bevy of songs that I didn't hit skip on until the last three tracks. Til this day I play some of those songs randomly just because and for different moods. Her club banger Jump still gets me hype when I'm at the bar with a bunch of drunk people and what not. (don't judge me lol). Her follow up project Anti is still under review at the moment, but her single work is definitely getting it's due playing time.

Rihanna is on this list simply because she's getting better with every single album and feature that she's on. It's been 4 years between the releases of her last two albums, but when you're on the level that she's at, you can do that kind of thing. At this point I'm still listening to her sound and figuring out what it is exactly that I like about her. But for now I'm just learning to enjoy the music that she makes and the party vibes that she gives. Because at the end of the day there's not too many artists that can do what she does to your inner dancing spirit.


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