April 16--Rihanna exudes a cool that suggests she's one step ahead of everyone and she doesn't really have to try. It's the equivalent of a mic drop followed by the sound of a door slamming as she makes her exit before anyone can react.
That don't-give-a-fig attitude gave much of her concert Friday at the United Center a remote, even perfunctory feel. But she lit up when she simply approached the microphone and sang. No dancing, no half-hearted arena patter, no "showmanship" -- just songs. It took about an hour, but she finally got there.
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And, yes, Rihanna has too many indelible songs to compress into a single concert. She hasn't released an official greatest hits collection yet, but if she did it would define the last decade the way Madonna did the '80s with "The Immaculate Collection" or Mariah Carey's "Greatest Hits" the '90s. At age 28, she's already notched 14 No. 1 singles, and she zipped through many of them at the United Center, plus reprising her cameo hooks on Eminem's "Love the Way You Lie," Drake's "Take Care," Jay Z's "Run This Town," T.I.'s "Live Your Life" and Kanye West's "All of the Lights."
Her staging was sparse in comparison to the pop extravaganzas of recent years by Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and Madonna. Her outfits were equally modest, heavy on capes and hoodies in muted colors. The one eye-grabbing moment occurred at the outset, as she emerged on a stage that folded over the sound booth at the back of the arena, then rode a transparent bridge above the crowd to the main stage. Her energetic dancers did much of the heavy lifting, with Rihanna participating in the choreography while never once appearing to exert herself. Her band, submerged initially beneath the stage, became major participants as the performance unfolded. The four musicians blended rock chords, futuristic keyboard textures and reggae bass lines.
The singer moved from sincerity soaked in melodrama ("Stay") to raw lust ("Rude Boy"). She could sound like a robot ("Birthday Cake"), flirted with country and electronic dance music (in the same song, no less: "Where Have You Been") and chilled in a sea of Caribbean rhythms ("Consideration") -- musically, she's never strayed too far from her homeland of Barbados. The pacing was brisk -- almost too brisk. The songs came rapid-fire, rarely requiring little more than a verse or two from the singer, and she dispatched them without much passion.
That's too bad, because as a vocalist Rihanna is in her own category. She doesn't wail or stretch notes till they explode. There's a bit of grit in her voice, some rough edges, and enunciation is not always a primary concern. She slurred her way through her latest single, the dancehall-reggae hit "Work," but it worked: When you title an album "Anti," you're declaring that you're not playing by everyone else's rules. At other moments, she didn't even bother to match her lip-syncing with the recorded vocals blasting through the speakers. But it turned out she was just biding her time.
For the show's final stretch, she donned a baggy zoot suit out of a 1930s jazz lounge, and it suited her and the vocals, which for the first time all night didn't sound canned. On "Needed Me," she turned a kiss-off into something more complex, an ache creeping into her voice. She veered far from her wheelhouse for "Same Ol' Mistakes," an interpretation of a song by the Australian psychedelic rock band Tame Impala, embodying the conflict described in the lyrics as she twisted away from the microphone. A rasp underlined her disappointment over a betrayal in a stripped-down "FourFiveSeconds" and she blurred the line between pain and rapture with a devastating "Love on the Brain." Rihanna really isn't a soul singer -- she's too self-contained for that -- but she became one for those few minutes onstage, and it was thrilling.
Greg Kot is a Tribune critic.
greg@gregkot.com
Rihanna set list Friday at United Center:
1. Stay
2. Love the Way You Lie (Part II)
3. Woo
4. Sex With Me
5. Birthday Cake
6. Pour It Up
7. Numb
8. B-- Better Have My Money
9. Goodnight Gotham (Interlude)
10. Consideration
11. Live Your Life (T.I. cover)
12. Run This Town (Jay Z cover)
13. All of the Lights (Kanye West cover)
14. Umbrella
15. Desperado
16. Man Down
17. Rude Boy
18. Work
19. Take Care (Drake cover)
20. We Found Love
21. Where Have You Been
22. Needed Me
23. Same Ol' Mistakes (Tame Impala cover)
24. Diamonds
25. FourFiveSeconds
26. Love on the Brain
27. Kiss It
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