Rihanna’s talk is direct and her music too is the same. It’s no wonder that her studio album (her sixth), is lyrically satisfying and musically equally catchy and danceable pop album, with a few ballads thrown in. The album is rooted in her usual style of R & B, dance – pop, with elements of hip hop, 80s electro, a bit of trance, house and variations of dub step, the last genre which she used widely in her fourth album ‘Rated R’.

The album arrives after one year of her super successful ‘Loud’. While fans are joyous, many would wonder why the songstress is back so soon, but mind you this is a solid collection with Rihanna spilling on topics she loves: love and sex.

Rihanna has brought in a few top songwriter-producers to help her on the album. You have The-Dream, No I.D., Dr. Luke, Stargate and a few others. The opening track, You Da One, which is produced by Dr. Luke, is a bouncy mid-tempo song with a Caribbean flavor and features dub step midway through the song. She chances on trance with Where Have You Been, while her first single We Found Love, an electro house piece is catchy from the word go. The heavy beats that reach a crescendo are impressive. The title track Talk That Talk features rapper Jay Z and is a heady spinner track.

Lyrically, the album speaks of sexuality and love and that comes as no surprise. Rihanna is known to spring some saucy lyrics into her songs and singing about sex is nothing new for her. On the opener You Da One she ruses “Shouldn't have hit it like that/had me yelling like that,” while on another track Cockiness (love it) she exudes "I love it when you eat it. . . . Suck my cockiness/Lick my persuasion……" which makes it the raunchiest song on the album. Party material comes in with her super hit single We Found Love that talks of a destructive relationship, the music video showing someone similar to ex - flame Chris Brown. Check out We All Want Love that has a few banal lyrics expressing love, betrayal, girl power. On the album title Talk That Talk featuring Jay Z, Rihanna doesn’t talk about love or sex, she talks about lust.

The Barbadian native rants well on the whole album. Standouts would include the repetitious We Found Love featuring Calvin Harris that repeats itself in “We found love in a hopeless place.” The lyrics emotionally move you to realize the effect from just one line of the song. Rihanna knows the reason for this repeated dialogue for she has had success earlier too on songs like Umbrella and  What’s your name in choruses that go'Ella-ella-ella-ay' and 'Oh-na-na' respectively.  The catchy hooks leave you asking for more. Rihanna is stradling herself to vie for the hot spot on the charts with many of her songs in the range, control, of her many accomplished contemporaries, such as Beyoncé, Lady GaGa. Her voice is the same as you’d hear it on her previous albums, and it’s a bet that the first bars of a song with her voice can make you recognize that it’s Rihanna. It’s no wonder then that artists like Eminem incorporated her into their hits.

Farewell and We All Want Love are the requisite ballads on the album. The latter has good guitar riffs. But it’s the thumping We Found Love the topper here. Its beat, which builds slowly and explode, are gigantic and pure dance material. There’s also Where Have You Been with a lot of electronica and rocking beats. You can cue on with Cockiness (Love It) which has been produced by Bangladesh and is a hip hop outtake with dancehall elements. Fast forwarding a few places and Drunk on Love brings on longtime collaborator Stargate who brings in elements of trance influenced beats and synths. The first half of the album is the trump here, but the album title ‘Talk that Talk’ featuring Jay Z who samples The Notorious B.I.G’s ‘I got a story to tell’, is another winner for the songstress.  

Rating: ****

Reviewed by Verus Ferreira