Rihanna may still have her umbrella (ella, ella), but all offers to stand under it are off. If 2007's multiplatinum chart beast Good Girl Gone Bad was her gleaming pop opus, Rated R is a defiant middle finger to all that — a posttraumatic diary built on 
 furious bravado, rampant profanity, and the bruising fallout from her February assault at the hands of then boyfriend Chris Brown.

Granted, the 21-year-old Barbadian star has spent the last five years shedding successive skins — first emerging as the blithe island princess of her 2005 debut, Music of the Sun, then remolded into the nascent urban Lolita of '06's A Girl Like Me and the increasingly provocative baby diva of Gone Bad. Here, the material is almost obsessively dark and mono-focused, from the not-difficult-to-parse metaphors in shuddering first single ''Russian Roulette'' to the self-lacerating balladry of ''Stupid in Love.''

Throughout, Rihanna dons hip-hop swagger like borrowed armor, leaning heavily on her Caribbean accent and unleashing a string of baddest-bitch boasts via dancehall-riddim'd bangers like ''Hard,'' ''G4L,'' and ''Wait Your Turn.'' But R is also spiked with aggressive guitars, from the Slash-guesting ''Rockstar 101'' to the shamelessly ''Purple Rain''-riffing coda, ''The Last Song.'' A genuine moment of vulnerability plays stunningly on the meticulously layered ''Cold Case Love,'' penned by Justin Timberlake. Still, Rated R rarely delivers Top 40 fodder. Instead, it's a raw, often unsettling portrait of an artist who is, she insists, no longer a Girl at all. B

***/**** For all the talk of an edgier, angrier and more mature new Rihanna, it's hard to buy the re-emergent dance-pop singer as a towering pillar of feminine strength akin to Patti Smith, Courtney Love, Queen Latifah or Mary J. Blige.

It will take more than a few fiery television interviews and a dark and futuristic new look that's equal parts Darryl Hannah in "Blade Runner" and Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes in TLC to really sell that.

Nevertheless, "Rated R," the new album recorded in the wake of Rihanna's altercation with former boyfriend Chris Brown arriving in stores Tuesday, is by far the best, most layered and most heartfelt effort of the 21-year-old artist's career, even if her new woman-in-charge persona is in part just another marketing pose.

Ever since Robyn Rihanna Fenty was discovered in her native Barbados by Evan Rogers, a veteran producer of 'N Sync, Christina Aguilera, Jessica Simpson and Kelly Clarkson, the one-time beauty queen has followed the path of many other prefab pop princesses in the new millennium, cheerfully turning her scantily clad self over to the manipulations of the star-making machine.

Her first two albums, "Music of the Sun" (2005) and "A Girl Like Me" (2006), were easily dismissible dance-pop trifles with a hint of Caribbean spicing. Riri, as she's known to fans, began to show more range with the phenomenally successful "Good Girl Gone Bad" in 2007. But as that title and the enjoyable but ultimately insubstantial singles "Umbrella" and "Disturbia" indicated, she still seemed to be just another pretty puppet dancing on the strings of her (male) producers, managers and handlers.

Then came the altercation with Brown that derailed her scheduled performance during the Grammy Awards last February. Though the details were sketchy at first--and Rihanna, like many victims of abuse, initially seemed to absolve her assailant--Brown eventually pleaded guilty to felony assault, and Rihanna bid him good riddance.

There can be no debate: Penitent or not, Brown has proven to be a world-class creep and a brutal thug. He began serving a sentence of five years' probation, six months of community labor and a year of domestic violence counseling last August. And Rihanna started making her fourth studio album with a superstar team of producers and songwriters including Stargate, the Dream, Ne-Yo, will.i.am and Justin Timberlake.

"I was involved in a lot of the writing," Rihanna told Glamour magazine. "I put everything I've wanted to say for the past eight months into my music. The songs are really personal. It's rock 'n' roll, but it's really hip-hop: If Lil Wayne and Kings of Leon like my album, then I'll feel good... It's super-fearless."

Though there's nothing inherently rock 'n' roll or "super-fearless" about lacing slick, synthesized dance-pop grooves with a little electric guitar, some of it courtesy of Slash, a quarter of a century after "Thriller," there is a more insistent punch and electrifying energy in the 13 grooves on "Rated R," which also lives up to its title and emphasizes its maturity with a lot more profanity than we've heard from Riri in the past. (This is her first disc with a Parental Advisory warning label.)

The album moves through the same sort of emotional journey that one imagines the singer undergoing in the last year. After an opening old-school horror-movie homage called "Mad House"--more shades of "Thriller"--we find Rihanna boasting about being part of an unbeatable team ("Together we gonna be taking over") and sitting on top of the pop charts and the world in general ("Brilliant, resilient/Fan mail from 27 million") in "Wait Your Turn" and "Hard."

Then things get darker--and more interesting. Set against a spare, piano-driven melody, "Stupid in Love" is as honest an examination of how a smart woman can fall into a destructive relationship as pop has ever given us. The singer continues to probe this theme with the more upbeat and obviously metaphorical "Russian Roulette" before finally standing up for herself in "Rockstar 101." (And isn't it great that, even in these commercially co-opted times, some people still equate "rock" with "rebellion"?)

"I've never played a victim/I'd rather be a stalker," Rihanna sings. That's hardly a profound or particularly feminist lyric, but its strength comes from the way she spits out the words. In both the quieter, more introspective songs and the angrier dancehall-flavored club-stompers, her limited vocal range has never sounded more convincing or deserving of the pop spotlight.

As with the first third of the disc, the last portion isn't quite as gripping as the middle section. The album ends with a bit more sunshine, culminating with the lushly arranged, Timberlake-penned "Cold Case Love" and the aptly named sing-along coda, "The Last Song."

Is any of this the 2009 equivalent of Aretha Franklin belting out, "R-E-S-P-E-C-T/Find out what it means to me"? Heck no. But "Rated R" is a much better effort than many might have expected from Rihanna, and one that makes this listener eager to hear how much more she may grow in the years to come.

seriously eff the haters - this goes IN!

i was never much of a rihanna lover - but obviously i just HAD to check out her new disc. i am FAR from disappointed! i love it. she sounds great - i love when she uses her lower register, wayy more appealing. i'm 8 songs in and so far no filler, they're all pretty awesome. can't WAIT for the tour. hopefully (considering that it obviously helped with her vocals) she has some SERIOUS stage presence this time around

who else is LOVING this??