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The Rundown: Rihanna, Unapologetic - Everyone knows Rihanna: She's one of the biggest pop stars on the planet and she's already six albums (and 25 million sold) into her career. But with her seventh album, Unapologetic, which drops today, Nov. 20, she proves she's still got plenty of tricks up her sleeve: There are new sounds, new inspirations and soaring vocals, and she delves into her relationship with Chris Brown deeper than ever before. But that doesn't answer the most important question: Does it sound good? Read on to find out with BET.com's track-by-track take on Rihanna's Unapologetic. —Alex Gale (Photo: Def Jam) 

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"Phresh Out the Runway" - Rihanna reminds us immediately that she’s often been one of music’s most forward-thinking superstars over this downright weird pop take on trap-rap. She adapts Future's atonal Auto-Tune delivery, practically rapping at points. Playful ratchet-ness combined with high-fashion diva — it’s a fitting opening for a Rihanna album. “How could you be so hood, but you so f--king pop? How could you be so fun, and sound like you selling rocks?” she asks herself. (Photo: Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images)

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"Diamonds" - Listeners should be familiar with this song by now — it currently sits at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. In the context of the deeply personal Unapologetic, it stands out for its similarity to her past two albums, Loud and Talk That Talk: That is, it's obviously pop song by committee, much like "We Found Love." Still, it's hard to deny the track's aspirational, earworm-y optimism, fueled by one of the best vocal performances of her career.  (Photo: Patrick Hoffmann/WENN.com)

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"Numb" feat. Eminem - "Numb" features a satisfyingly disorienting beat, which threatens to dive into Rihanna's familiar fist-pumping past, but instead makes a last-minute swerve to Houston screw music — a wise choice. Eminem returns the favor for Rih Rih's "Love You the Way You Lie" hook with a love-it-or-hate-it verse. His instantly memorable line, "I'm the butt police and I'm looking at your rear," could be taken as hilarious or annoyingly juvenile — we're going with the former. (Photo: Interscope)

Photo By Photo: Aftermath Records

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"Pour It Up" - Rihanna's much-Instagrammed strip club dalliance with Meek Mill finds its sonic representation on "Pour It Up." It's basically Rihanna's version of "Bands a Make Her Dance" (sure enough, Mike Will Made It produced both songs), and proof positive of her ability to co-opt existing trends and transform them into her own new ones. R&B for Styrofoam cups and strip clubs? Yes, please.  (Photo: WENN.com)

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"Loveeeeeee Song" feat. Future - With their rumored past relationship, it's not a stretch to imagine Rihanna being inspired by Drake's Take Care. The drowsy wisp of a beat on this song certainly wouldn't be out of place on that album, though here it's Future who plays the role of strangely robotic crooner. He shows off a new pop side rather convincingly, breaking out of the trap and preemptively putting a big damper on the imminent T-Pain comeback. (Photos from left: Kevin Winter/Getty Images, Chris McKay/Getty Images for BET)

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"Jump" - After pleading for love with Future, Rihanna retreats to her familiar baddest b---h pose here. Ginuwine's "Pony" gets a shout-out, which is always welcome. But the real takeaway is Rihanna fully jumping on the dub-step express. She's uncharacteristically late here, as so-called "bass music" is already threatening to flame out via overexposure. Still, she’s probably the first superstar-level pop artist to embrace dubstep so wholeheartedly, for better or for worse. (Photo: Danny Martindale/Getty Images)

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"Right Now" feat. David Guetta - OK, this is now officially the dubstep section of the album. Linking with ubiquitous dance-music star David Guetta, Rihanna veers dangerously close to straight-up bro-step sonic clichés here. Still, this song is a no-doubt hit, with easily digestible YOLO lyrics and Guetta's proven Euro-pop sheen. It's almost guaranteed to give dubstep its biggest chart success yet. (Photos from left: Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images, Andreas Rentz/Getty Images)

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"What Now" - The closer in the album's dub-step trilogy is by far the most interesting, starting as a piano-drive pop confessional before switching to the familiar monster drums and synth bass. Though Rihanna doesn't have a single writing or production credit on the album, this is where things start to get refreshingly personal, and the Chris Brown subtext that follows Rihanna everywhere gets difficult to ignore. "I found the one he changed my life, but was it me that changed," she wails, in one of the album's best vocal takes. (Photo: John Shearer/Getty Images for Entertainment Industry Foundation)

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"Stay" feat. Mikky Ekko - All acoustic piano and reverb, the negative space and pure pop balladry of "Stay" are a major refresher after the dense dance-music bombast of the previous songs. Duetting effectively with clear-voiced Nashville crooner Mikky Ekko, Rihanna again takes the perspective of a conflicted lover, an emerging theme of the album. (Photos from left: Kevin Winter/Getty Images for KCA, mikky ekko/Twitter)

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"Nobody's Business" feat. Chris Brown - This has to be one of the more disturbing songs in pop-music history. There are two ways to read it. On its face, it sounds like a once-battered woman and her former abuser telling everyone to butt out — while simultaneously flaunting their love. When they sing "Let's make out in this Lexus," it's impossible not to think of that last time they were in a car together, back in 2009. If it's not that, it's a craven way to troll the world for attention — the juxtaposition of the song's name and guest artist are newsworthy on their own. It's too bad, because musically speaking, the blend of classic Chicago house and late-'80s Michael Jackson is pretty awesome. Still, it's a key chapter in the album's narrative, making the inspiration for the album more blatant, in case it wasn't already. (Photos from left: Michael Buckner/Get...

Photo By Photos from left: Michael Buckner/Getty Images

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"Love Without Tragedy/Mother Mary" - On this two-part song, Rihanna again seems to take her relationship with Brown head on, but here, without him two-stepping across the track, it's much more palatable. "Felt like love struck me in the night, I pray that love don't strike twice," she sings touchingly. "What's love without tragedy?" The-Dream and Carlos McKinney wrote and produced the Tears for Fears-inspired background, but as usual, Rihanna convincingly sings the lyrics as if they're her own. (Photo: Carlos Alvarez/Getty Images)

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"Get It Over With" - Many of the best moments on the album are the smaller, intimate ones. "Get It Over With" seems to take a page from British singer-producer James Blake, with sparse percussion, dreamy string synths and soulful vocal runs from Rihanna backed up beautifully by Roc Nation singer-songwriter Michael Fauntleroy. (Photo: Mark Davis/Getty Images for Coachella)

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"No Love Allowed" - Rihanna's West Indian background, heretofore absent from the record, finally rears its head. Hearing the N-word and Auto-Tune over an analog roots-reggae backing is rather jarring, but so is the violence-as-love metaphor — another thread that ties the album together, but it's most explicit here. "Like a bullet your love hit me to the core, I was flying 'til you knocked me to the floor," she sings. (Photo: Rihanna/Facebook)

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"Lost in Paradise" - The James Blake influence that showed up on “Get It Over With” is in full bloom on this track’s opening, filled with quirky analog synths and vocodered emoting. It's a great example of Rihanna’s disparate influences and her increasingly impressive ability to curate and blend them into her own individualized pop microgenre.  (Photo: Mark Davis/Getty Images)

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"Half of Me" - "Half of Me" is another pop power ballad — with a little bit of dubstep thrown in yet again for good measure. It's strange that it's only available on the deluxe version, because it's a worthy closer for Rihanna's most introspective, most personal (writing credits aside), most cohesive album, her first that doesn't just seem like a focus-grouped collection of singles. "You saw me on the television," she sings, "hanging out my dirty linen." Of course, there's the possibility, even likelihood, that the confessional, tabloid-fodder lyrics on Unapologetic are just an attention grab. But publicity stunts rarely sound this good. Even hungry hostages trapped on her ill-fated 777 private-jet tour would probably agree: Unapologetic is Rihanna's best album yet.  (Photo: Scott Gries/Getty Images)