Rihanna - Talk That Talk

Rihanna made this album on the road. Recorded in hotel rooms and rented studios between February and November 2011 while the Loud Tour was still running, Talk That Talk arrived barely a year after its predecessor, during the stretch when she was putting out a record every twelve months and somehow getting better at it. Thirty-seven minutes, no wasted space, and a producer list that reads like a snapshot of where pop was heading: Calvin Harris, Stargate, Dr. Luke, Cirkut, Hit-Boy, No I.D., Chase & Status.

"We Found Love" is the reason this record is a landmark. Written and produced by Harris and delivered by Rihanna in a performance that sounds simultaneously euphoric and wrecked, it spent ten weeks at No. 1 on the Hot 100, the longest run of any single that year, and topped the charts in more than twenty-five countries. Nothing else here has to compete with that, and the album is smart enough not to try. "Where Have You Been" flips a 1959 country song into pure dancefloor pressure, the Jay-Z-featuring title track goes hard and low, and "Cockiness (Love It)" and "Birthday Cake" show the provocateur streak she was never particularly interested in reining in.

It debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and went straight to No. 1 in the UK and across much of Europe, ending the year as one of the biggest-selling albums on the planet. More than a decade later it plays as the pivot point where her pop instincts fully fused with club music, the record that made everything after it possible.

This edition presents the album on a single LP via Def Jam Recordings.