The Baja beauty Rihanna has graced us with another video for the next single to be lifted from her Rated R album titled “Rude Boy”. She promised that she would return to her Caribbean roots with this video and in that respect she didn’t disappoint. Having said that, there is definitely still a lot left to be desired with this video. Mainly, her direction. One minute she’s a sweet island girl, the next she’s and moody rock chick who plays Russian roulette and now she’s running for dancehall queen.
Nevertheless, this track is no doubt one of the strongest single’s from the album and this video is definitely hot. She shows us how to dutty wine like a pro while asking her Rude Boy if he’s big enough. Now, this I love. I prefer the Rihanna who was ponning the replay and frolicking to the music of the sun. This brings me back to her vintage style for a moment and I do appreciate that.
However visually, this video is doing a lot. There’s flashy computerized visuals, fake jungle animals, bold prints and a vibe that is very Yo! MTV Raps meets The Brady Bunch split screen. It is indeed a little all over the place but, I definitely get the fun, out of the box, salacious vibe that she was going for here. It’s not enough to make a good track great, but enough to make us remember it. Anytime an artist will hump a plastic zebra in her video, you know she is definitely going for a big wow factor.
Rihanna definitely succeeded in that respect. I’ll admit I had to watch this a couple of times to really understand it. And I still don’t. But I do understand that this track is catchy, the video is colorful and quite memorable and Rihanna has done an interesting job of making us continue to be intrigued by her. Even if we’re not completely sure why.
Check out the video below. Is this a hit or miss for Rihanna?
