“The Show is Ova!”
When you're posing with CoCo, your stock drops and your clock starts ticking PRETTY quick. (photo courtesy Bossip)
Two Rihanna posts in a row. Don’t worry, this won’t be happening again.
Le sigh. RiRi’s just released her brand spankin’ new vid for “Wait Your Turn (The Wait is Ova),” the second (?) single off her highly-anticipated Rated R album. Now, before my fellow cynics get snippy, note that I said “highly-anticipated,” making sure to clarify that I haven’t been waiting, because frankly I have never waited for a Rihanna album and I have yet to wait for one. Perhaps when her music and the production on her tracks improves …
But, I am all over the videos. It’s part of my passion for the moving image. Feature films can rarely offer creativity, and short-form videos (music vids included) are really much more interesting and imaginative anyway, especially these days. So, when my friend Zani bbm’d me “The wait is ova!” (all puns intended), and sent along the Youtube link, I kinda felt like I had to watch. Also because people are getting mad because I don’t post enough, or I’m not all over every item floating around in pop culture, or when I post I’m too harsh, or too soft. Guess, like RiRi, I too cannot please everyone with my choices, haha!
Today, it’s a grey, crappy day in Toronto. I’m home today, and my head’s pounding right now as I’m still under the weather. Pathetic fallacy abounds. And so, I feel like being harsh today, and so luckily Rihanna’s career gets to suffer too.
The song fucking sucks. The video? Trite. Any and all attempts at edginess fall flat, as usual with Rihanna. “Good girl gone bad,” my foot: there’s nothing badass about taking shots from your teenage boyfriend, then refusing to comment on it for NINE MONTHS, much to the dismay of your fans (especially the abused ones); then singing substandard hip hop/R&B hooks on every track you’re offered, just to stay relevant; then releasing your own substandard tracks; and then finally agreeing to talk to Diane Sawyer not because you care about your fans, but because you need publicity for your new album. Because, make no mistake: if this album fails numbers-wise, RiRi is going to have to take a nice, long break from releasing music. No savvy manager or agent would advise otherwise.
The overexposure is hitting boiling point. Everyone’s saying it. I, for one, am completely exhausted by seeing Rihanna everywhere when I make my daily news and pop culture news rounds, when in reality, she is not producing anything of merit that warrants the press she gets. Moreover, she’s steadily refused to talk about “that night,” which is the only thing people have wanted to hear from her since February, and now that she’s going to on 20/20 there isn’t much room to move from there. Because the only thing RiRi has to offer these days is buzz. Buzz, and no substance. It’s like being satisfied with cutting through crab shell only to find tiny scraps of meat that just can’t satisfy your hunger, no matter how much of it you might eat. Well, I know Rihanna never had substance, but at least her team attempted to inject her image with some during her Good Girl Gone Bad heyday. Now, it seems like they’ve all just gotten lazy, content to rest on their laurels because people are stupid and have low standards. It doesn’t take much of anything to impress the huddled masses these days.
If you want me to get more detailed about just how much I loathe this song and video …
1) Rihanna cannot fucking sing. Now, this I’m actually cool with, as I like a lot of vocalists and frontwomen who don’t have great voices: Janet Jackson, Eleanor Jackson (of La Roux), Britney Spears, OLD pre-sellout Nelly Furtado (ever heard her live? awful), and M.I.A. come to mind. The deep, guttural register RiRi is working with here in the verses sounds absolutely terrible. It’s painfully embarrassing to listen to, especially because this is a finished, mastered version and yet STILL sounds like something J.Lo would have pumped out back in the day. But at least J.Lo had/has some form of personality, whether you liked it or not. The point here is: Don’t attempt vocal gymnastics if you don’t have the pipes for it.
2) While I don’t expect everyone to sound like Adele and Beyonce, I still expect you to bring something else of interest to the table. Sensationalism. Rough beginnings. A difficult childhood. A dirty big ego. Heartbreak. A “foot-in-mouth” persona. A genuinely bad (not contrived-bad) attitude. SOMETHING. Carefully crafted “edgy” outfits conjured up by a very good, very silent stylist (to make it look as if you dress yourself) and endless paparazzi pics do not a music career make. Rihanna has always been just a blank slate – I’ve hardly ever seen two different facial expressions from her. Aren’t we in the middle of the worst global recession we’ve seen since The Great Depression? What happened to cutting the fat? Seems like Rihanna is now part of “the fat” we need to cut – along with The Simpson sisters, the still-lurking overpaid fat cat execs in EVERY industry, BET, the Kardashians, almost all MTV programming, those Hills morons, Amber Rose (ew), Katy Perry, the Cyrus family, and whoever insists on keeping Fox News alive.
3) THE FUCKING CROTCH GRAB AT 0:38. It stopped shocking people in 1992. There’s high school seniors and a few superbright college kids younger than this move. Trite.
4) The cropped, hooded chinchilla coat belongs on Cam’ron, Ghostface Killah, or more appropriately on Queen Pen whom Rihanna seems to be channeling, circa her “No Diggety” days. From one Grammy winner to another, right? Not to mention that PETA will probably see this and schedule a paint-throw photo op REAL soon. (Please see video below for the funniest PETA attack I’ve seen in a while.)
5) The complete lack of coolness and/or smoothness genuinely kills me. Rihanna looks so forced and awkward doing some of these moves that I cringe with fontrum every time. It’s completely incredible. My favourites are at the following marks -0:15, 0:20, 1:03, 1:41 and 3:37. Please let The R know if you actually are gullible enough to believe that RiRi is a bad bitch, because I just may be able to help you with that. Seriously. I am totally fed up of the overuse and misuse of the term “bad bitch.” Rihanna is NOT a bad bitch, nor are any of the other “I’m famous for doing almost nothing” chicks aimlessly floating around the celebrity world. Maybe Nicki Minaj, but that’s still under review. In “The Wait is Ova,” I’m about as scared of Rihanna as I am the gang members in the Michael Jackson “Bad” video, with their West Side Story dancefight moves. Oooh, CB, you’d better watch out!
6) The blonde and black mohawk/undercut … I cannot endorse here. I’m all for edge and originality and weird shit fashion-wise, but just … no. Besides, the hipster-inspired head shaving is so 2 years ago. Why is hip hop so late with the subculture trends these days? Remember Jay-Z rocking big black plastic frames about a year or two too late? All kinds of wack.
7) Please note the heavy Bajan accent, which was a production decision meant to please and/or impress … well, nobody. As a West Indian, I’m not impressed by its convenient use here to make Rihanna seem tough and “hard.” Where was this accent before? Why is it so pronounced now? It is because Rihanna “gets real” when she’s angry? Like Lafayette says, “Hooker, PLEASE.”
Anyway, I’ve said all I can muster up for now. Here, from The R to you, is “The Wait is Ova.” Also take a look at the hilarious PETA attack video below. “Fur hag! She wear fur!” I’m still dying of laughter.
The R Word: Rant. Rihanna needs to pull up and come again, much like a hot party track on an urban radio station.
UPDATE: Removed the RiRi vid, couldn’t deal with the fact that it automatically started playing every time I logged on. Yeah, you’re welcome.
