Album review: Rihanna's 'Anti' shows her accumulated power

Rihanna, "Anti" (Roc Nation)

None of the singles Rihanna released last year during the long run-up to "Anti" — "FourFiveSeconds" (featuring Kanye West and Paul McCartney), "American Oxygen" and "Bitch Better Have My Money" — made it onto this new album, which suggests a level of indecision on her part.

But perhaps this bumpy path to market — it was released online for 24 hours — wasn't an accident or a sign of failure so much as an indication of Rihanna's new approach. For much of the past decade, she has been a bright spot in a struggling record industry, consistently doling out hit songs one after the other.

Yet somewhere in the wake of her last album, 2012's "Unapologetic," Rihanna seemed to lose interest in her role as radio's most reliable rainmaker; her focus shifted elsewhere, to movies, fashion and especially Instagram, even as her pop stardom grew.

Seen in that context, "Anti's" chaotic delivery resembles a rejection of the type of careful strategizing that drives many high-level pop careers in 2016. It also looks like an exercise of accumulated power.

Certainly, Rihanna is taking advantage of her position on this album, her most adventurous by far. Throughout "Anti" she turns away from the bright, propulsive sound of her best-known songs — "Umbrella," "We Found Love," "Diamonds" — and toward production that's looser and more unpredictable.

"Consideration" is a scratchy hip-hop number featuring underground R&B singer SZA of Kendrick Lamar's Top Dawg crew. "James Joint" has Rihanna describing her love of weed over shimmering, Stevie Wonder-style electric piano. "Same Ol' Mistakes" is a trippy remake of a tune by Australian psych-rock band Tame Impala.

"I got to do things my own way," she sings in "Consideration," and no one could doubt her determination.

Yet Rihanna isn't merely flexing her hard-won control here. She's also pushing back against her established image, which over the past few years has toughened, thrillingly, into a kind of icon of imperturbability.

"Anti" is remarkably tender at points, as in "Kiss It Better," a woozy synth-rock jam about a lover seeking reconciliation, and "Never Ending," which sets a similar idea over an acoustic arrangement that borrows from Dido's "Thank You," of all things.

In "Work," a lithe, dancehall-inspired duet with Drake, Rihanna's vocal melts into love-drunk babbling; the song shares a cool sensuality with "Hotline Bling," which contrasts with Drake's aggressive recent work in the same way that "Anti" does Rihanna's.

The album ends with two more moments of radical vulnerability: "Higher," a bleary retro-soul song in which she's mulling her regrets at the end of a very long night, and "Close to You," a sparse piano ballad that shows off her most unguarded singing.