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"  Rihanna has just released Unapologetic, her seventh album in just over seven years. Louis C.K. aside, most artists who attempt to come up with an hour of new material per annum are going to have to rely on filler material to pad out their recordings. Unapologetic is no different. Its fifteen tracks include a number of flaccid ballads, half-baked stabs at dancefloor pop, and various other uninspiring ways to pass three-and-a-half to four minutes of time. But there&amp;#039;s gold in there, too. Below is a suggested playlist of the keepers:      &amp;quot;Nobody&amp;#039;s Business&amp;quot; (featuring Chris Brown) The bad news is that it&amp;#039;s a duet with Chris Brown. The worse news is that it&amp;#039;s a really, really great song. Producer Terius &amp;quot;The-Dream&amp;quot; Nash (working here with Los Da Mystro) has an almost unnerving talent for hacking into the brain&amp;#039;s pleasure center, and, given the chance, he could probably make a record with Joseph Kony that I&amp;#039;d listen to at least a few of times. Here, he sets Brown up with a silky, sleek house-inflected disco beat that, with enough Auto-Tune to hit the high notes \u2014 ahem \u2014 anyone could have knocked out of the park. As for Rihanna, she bounces around the melody and messes with her phrasing in realtime, just to show off how easy it is.      &amp;quot;Phresh Out the Runway&amp;quot; Rihanna&amp;#039;s a party girl at heart, and as such, each of her albums has at least one song you&amp;#039;re meant to get a little crazy to. In this case, it&amp;#039;s the opening track, in which she climbs on top of a pile of arena-rave synths sitting on top of a foundation of arena-rock drums and turns her swagger on full-blast. Played at the proper volume, it is worthy of actual, unironic headbanging.      &amp;quot;Diamonds&amp;quot; remix (featuring Kanye West) The album version of Unapologetic&amp;#039;s lead single is a perfectly acceptable self-affirmation anthem, but its charms start to fade after a handful of listens. On the remix \u2014 available as a non-track album \u2014 Kanye raps part of the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song, shouts out to Tay Zonday, and basically intrudes upon the song in the way we&amp;#039;ve become accustomed to, all of which improve the song considerably. Plus, the single&amp;#039;s cover art is a photo of a woman rolling a joint made out of diamonds, which is very hard to argue with.      &amp;quot;Pour It Up&amp;quot; By now, you should hopefully be at least aware of the dark, sexy, and druggy phase that R&amp;amp;amp;B is going through at the moment. Here&amp;#039;s Rihanna&amp;#039;s contribution to the form, which is black-satiny enough to fit in comfortably on a playlist between Frank Ocean and The Weeknd.      &amp;quot;No Love Allowed&amp;quot; Another staple for any Rihanna LP is the uptempo Caribbean-tinged cut that allows her to let out her inner rude gyal, which is always a blast for everyone involved. This time around, it appears as a dubby, interestingly drum-free track with its roots sunk deep into reggae history, stretching all the way back to pioneering soundsmiths like King Tubby and Lee &amp;quot;Scratch&amp;quot; Perry.      &amp;quot;Numb&amp;quot; (featuring Eminem) With her recent dip into seapunk, Rihanna proved that she has her finger at least somewhere near the pulse of the dance-music underground. &amp;quot;Numb&amp;quot; is a more subtle appropriation that lifts elements from the burgeoning trap scene, as well as experimental post-hip-hop acts like Supreme Cuts. Eminem takes half a minute out of his busy schedule of doing who-knows-what to remind us that he can still deliver a commanding rap performance, when he feels so inclined.      &amp;quot;Love Without Tragedy / Mother Mary&amp;quot; The pop star gets ambitious and artsy on this seven-minute-long diptych. The first half, with its reggae-ish rhythm and chorus-drenched guitar arpeggios, proves that the Police would have been a much better band if they&amp;#039;d had Rihanna singing for them, and the lyrical references to Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, and elegant romantic dissolution in general suggest that she&amp;#039;s kept her eyes on a certain retro-obsessed chanteuse. The second half... Well, you can just skip that. BONUS TRACKS:      &amp;quot;Loveeeeeee Song&amp;quot; (featuring Future) A druggy slab of sci-fi R&amp;amp;amp;B featuring druggy computer crooner Future, who unfortunately brings his lyrical F-game.      &amp;quot;Right Now&amp;quot; (featuring David Guetta) Apparently, it&amp;#039;s the law now that every pop album needs to include at least one dubstep song. If only they were all this good. -- Miles Raymer is a music writer based in New York City who has contributed to the Chicago Reader, Vice, Pitchfork, and others. Follow The Culture Blog on RSS and on Twitter at @ESQCulture. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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