a l b u m s

[ ANTI (DELUXE EDITION) - RIHANNA 2016 ]
pop | alt rnb | hip-hop
this album, to me at least, is rihanna's magnum opus. it's a daring claim to make when she's had several bombastic releases in her career - UNAPOLOGETIC (2011), LOUD (2010), RATED R (2009) - along with house and dance classics like THIS IS WHAT YOU CAME FOR with calvin harris. i will fully admit that this came out while i was in high school and really feeling the drama of being a teenager. this album, however, to me exposes a side of rihanna that feels a bit more raw, her vocals breaking beautifully at some points of some songs like LOVE ON THE BRAIN and KISS IT BETTER. you'll see me use the word 'raw' a lot to describe a lot of the vocal stuff that i like lol sorry about that, but it's the best way that i can describe when vocals sound "naked", in the sense that there's not too much worry of making it sound extremely polished. in this album, rihanna's vocals make you feel like you're seated at the back of a bar watching her perform after a long night, a call to evenings that turn to early mornings due to the stresses of relationships and life in general. over the years, rihanna's voice has matured and rounded out, with her singing in this album taking a deeper tone. rihanna draws out her runs and phrases in a somewhat lethargic way, stringing everything together so effortlessly in a melancholic, lovesick way. i adore the way she sings.
the sounds of this album are also quite unlike a lot of what she has previously released. the way this album starts out is heavy and open ending, grabbing the attention of the listener with a good amount of bass-forward sounds in the first half, but later transitioning to slower, lower-end synths. this polarization also helps highlight the way rihanna sings in each track. everything uplifts what she sings. while there are many tracks in this album that fit into rihanna's specific brand of club music (WORK FT DRAKE, CONSIDERATION FT SZA, SEX WITH ME), a lot of this album also takes a step back from that, each song a story or a comment surrounding relationships and the intensity of it, substances and their effects, and a celebration of femininity and individualism.

my favorite tracks from this album:
- LOVE ON THE BRAIN | the way this track rises and falls between the verses just like the ups and downs of being in love... your honour i'm afraid it is rather sublime. my absolute favorite performance of this was when she sang this live in germany. when she lets herself go and belts out those high notes, letting her voice crack from emotion in such an artful and powerful way, i tear up each time i hear it. it's as if she's wailing thru her singing, wailing about how intense this love feels and how awful it is to maybe not having a reciprocation of those feelings. navigating relationships and our own individual experiences with how we feel about them can be a pretty gruelling process especially if you're worried about things not working out. this track is a call to how being so in love can maybe distort how things actually are, but you cannot help but still want them. this song is a call to validate these intense feelings, to find a way to hold onto something of this person that she is so infatuated with.

Rihanna · ANTI (Deluxe)

- HIGHER | for a song to come literally right after the previously mentioned song, it is such a great continuation from the energy of LOVE ON THE BRAIN. this track is a confirmation of the deep feelings she feels for this person that she expresses in the previous track, and she lets it all go even further by expressing her wants and most importantly sharing how she feels when she's with this person she's so in love. these two songs transition the album towards a more emotional and introspective point of view. to me, this felt like it was a transition from how relationships can start off as something easy, something that just happened, into something worthwhile to cultivate.

[ THE AWAKENING - INIKO 2025 ]
alternative | spiritual
though this album is labelled as 'alternative' on soundcloud, i find it hard to say that it is /just/ alternative music, as there's a lot of different sounds and concepts explored throughout this whole piece. the themes presented in this album - identity, individuality, embracing change - that it could be argued that this album fits in some sort of 'soul' category. iniko's vocal execution in this album are also incredibly top notch. their vocal range is insane, along with their ability to do consistent and constant runs without exhausting their voice or making it sound too repetitive. gender is tied to the theme of identity in this album, as there is mention in several lyrics of being neither man nor woman - a nod to iniko's identity as a nonbinary artist.
this album was initially introduced to me by my friend ember! it all started off with ember playing some iniko track remixes in their DJ sets. JERICHO was the first song i had heard from iniko, which makes sense as it was this song that had gone viral all over youtube shorts and tik tok. notably i remember hearing a version of jericho in a video where a bunch of people in new york were on rollerblades and the guy recording was kinding of massively killing it. iniko's music fit really well with the nature of the video, and i remember going back to that youtube video JUST to hear that song while seeing them all rollerskate hahah.

my favorite tracks from this album:
- ICARUS | this track is curiously named after the son of Daedalus, a genius craftsman in Greek mythos. he notably fell to his death by flying too close to the sun, the glue in the invention of wings melting due to the heat causing him to fall to his death. i believe the song iniko wrote references icarus as they characterize themselves as a being that has "died a million times" due to the "flying too close to the sun" - potentially meaning that iniko, being an individual who is open to change and taking changes, tends to "die" or fail by doing so. despite this, iniko sings that they "know what must be done", meaning that despite the fall, they have learned their lesson and are eager to rectify the mistakes and move forward.

- ARMOR | this one feels both like a battle cry and a ballad for the self - "my mind is a weapon, and my body is a battlefied, and i know my soul's intentions, to know what is, to know what's real!" - it really shakes me to the core. this song calls to the self to not fall to delusions, to be tied to reality and to know your own strength. despite the song being titled armor, the lyrics clearly state "i don't need armor, i'm more than brave", which could mean that instead of armor protecting us, our own sheer will is enough to shield us from harm. in this digital age, what can harm us may not always be tangible. it can be an ideal, propaganda, misinformation, so this song (at least to me) helps me remember that the real armor that we can have is a clear mind with clear intent.

INIKO · The Awakening

[ THE GREAT IMPERSONATOR - HALSEY 2024 ]
alternative rock | experimental
this album honestly fell into my lap thru this short on youtube. (you can find the full interview here) in this short, halsey is interviewed by zane lowe and she mentions that she cannot make another album. then she mentions this album, 'the great impersonator' - saying that even though it did great in its first week with over 100,000 individual sales, her label is "not allowing her to make another album since it did terribly compared to manic". 'manic' was an album that halsey releaesed in 2020, and i imagine she mentioned this album because it went platinum several times. she mentions in this interview that she thinks her label is not allowing her to make another album because this one didn't do so well compared to 'manic', and that she honestly think that's unfair.
i am not an avid halsey fan. i am familiar with badlands only because it released when i was in high school, and i heavily disliked it only really due to my distaste then (and even now, admittedly) with overhyped, billboard top 100 music. this album is very much NOT that. in the short i linked earlier, halsey calls this album an "experimental concept album" about how she nearly died. to be quite honest, just hearing her describe her work like that made me more interested to check it out. this is a far cry from the music she made nearly a decade ago, with this heavy melancholy and pain being a major theme of this body of work. when i listened to the first two songs, 'only girl in la' and 'ego', i knew i was going to be hooked into this album. there is very little of the pop sound that she had when we were both a decade younger. she approaches each of these tracks with this softness, with many of the tracks making feel like i needed to be looking out of a car window while its raining or to be on the beach during a cloudy day. this is a sound that wants you to know that they are mourning, they are in pain, and now despite all of that they are processing and expressing that thru this album.
admittedly, i am going to give this album some time in my daily rotation before picking some favorite songs and writing up something for them. for now, my favorite songs from the three full listens i did are 'ego', 'panic attack', and 'lonely is the muse'.

HalseyMusic · The Great Impersonator