So, let’s get right into it. Did “Russian Roulette” live up to the monstrous hype? In a nutshell, NO. Is it a good song, YES.
Of course it’s the typical situation, when something is hyped to great extremes and 90% of the time it never lives up to it. This is the case with “Russian Roulette”, written and produced by Ne-Yo. We already engraved into our minds that the song would not reach the caliber of “Umbrella” but our main gripe with the song not meeting the expectations… All this year we’ve been viewing non-stop, almost daily, paparazzi shots of Fenty and each time her style just kept evolving more and more into this dark and edgy being. Simply, we were expecting a loud, hi-energy, uptempo, edgy, instant #1 contender of a single, not an emotional ballad. We thought she would come out swinging with some unique and innovative sound.
Now let’s flip the script. We push aside all the previous hype and listen to the song on its own without any sort of distractions. The song is very good. It starts off with an electric guitar then switches gears into a heartbeat bass line. Rihanna comes in with her improved vocals and starts to sing about love, using the game of russian roulette as an analogy. She sings the song with such delicacy as it progresses into an apex. Implement Rihanna’s line “Soldiers, pull the trigger”, que the heartbeat bassline and BANG! There you have it and that’s Rihanna’s first offering. The song is giving us “Unfaithful” vibes and will surely go on to do well on the charts.
Related News
The confirmation came that Rihanna’s new album will be entitled Rated R to be released November 23, 2009. The video for the single, “Russian Roulette”, will be directed by long-time collaborator Anthony Mandler and is set to premiere on ABC-TV.
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Rihanna – Russian Roulette
