On Saturday night, Rihanna tweeted out a link to her new song, “FourFiveSeconds,” featuring Kanye West and Paul McCartney. When I tried to click through, the site was down due to the copious amount of people who’d beat me to the punch. Regardless, I was able to take a listen a later, and you can too on iTunes. Responses to the song seem to be pretty polarized, which falls in line with reactions to many aspects of Rihanna’s life.

I personally wasn’t thrilled by the song, but she’s so charming that I’ll give it a few more listens. You can also see her genuine excitement to get this out to her fans in an Instagram video she put up where she’s anxiously awaiting the arrival of the song on her site.

Whether you like the song or not, one thing everyone can agree on is that it doesn’t sound like any of her others. For some, this is a positive.


Considering she has seven studio albums under belt, her attempt to refresh things with a different sound is admirable to me; she could easily stick to the pop formula, but she has this air of independence that doesn’t match with just staying in a mold. However, some weren’t impressed.

Regardless, as I’m writing this, the song has been out for more than a few hours and is still trending worldwide, and the majority of tweets seem to be in support of badgalRiri. With three musical powerhouses on it, the song is definitely not fourfiveseconds from disappearing, so we might as well get used to it.