Rihanna - Rated R

Rated R is the album where Rihanna stopped being a pop star and became an author. Released November 20, 2009 on Def Jam, it arrived after the most scrutinized year of her life, and rather than soften the edges she made the darkest, hardest record of her career and dared radio to keep up.

It did. "Rude Boy" went to number one on the Hot 100, "Russian Roulette" turned a metaphor into a slow-motion execution, and "Hard" hit number 9 to give her a thirteenth Top 10 single, tying Beyoncé at the time for the most by a female artist in the US. Elsewhere the album is stranger and better than its singles suggest. Slash plays guitar on "Rockstar 101," "G4L" is genuinely menacing, "Fire Bomb" is a rock song wearing a pop chassis, and "Te Amo" glides in from another world entirely.

Six singles, one of the sharpest pivots of the era, and a record that reads better every year as the pop landscape catches up to what it was doing. Seventeen years on, Rated R sounds less like a reaction and more like a blueprint.

This Def Jam / SRP double LP presents the album across four sides in a trifold sleeve, its first vinyl release outside the Rihanna box set. Pressed at GZ Media.