Yesterday, Rihanna released the latest single, "Bitch Better Have My Money", from her forthcoming new album. We polled Pitchfork contributors about their initial impressions.
Safy-Hallan Farah: On “Better Have My Money”, Rihanna’s voice is scratchy like she smokes Newports, not just blunts. Somehow Rihanna sounds like she simultaneously has run out of fucks to give and cares so much she’s coughing up blood. This is that song you listen to in the line at the financial aid office, or if you’re parked outside the house of a person who owes you at least a stack. Other optimum listening scenarios include while doing your invoices or protesting the government for your 40 acres and a Bugatti.
“Better Have My Money” is 37 exits south of Stay in Your Lane for Ri-Ri BUT I LOVE IT. Before I heard “Better Have My Money”, this was my reparations anthem:
All I’m saying is DON’T play “Better Have My Money” at a Migos concert to warm up the crowd. DON’T play this at your family cookout this summer; that’s just instigating. And DON’T play this at the club either because anyone guilty of owing money will be too shook to dance. Please listen responsibly!
Jayson Greene: Yeah, Safy, I have always loved her voice when she lets it fray and get raspy. I remember realizing, when she performed "We Found Love" at the MTV Awards in 2012, how much character she had in that range. It came as a little revelation, because up until then part of her energy and power as a pop star derived from her voice, which is almost inhumanly even and powerful. Like, the chorus of "Only Girl in the World": The studio version of that song feels like being commanded by someone from atop a mountain. She's still formidable here, and projecting "formidable" feels like the song's reason for existence. The cracks work so well here, like she's battling laryngitis and losing, or like she's at the end of a very long press-junket day and is hollering anyway.
Molly Beauchemin: First of all, look at the incredible artwork— those eyebrows that burn holes in your soul, the chandelier earrings and bucket-slick hair. This is an obvious Frida Kahlo reference: a dark, powerfully feminine reference. The shadowy color palette and the way she’s angled with the camera make it look like its an Edward S. Curtis portrait, so I think that from a purely aesthetic perspective this is indisputably the most fire artwork Rihanna has ever put out—let’s hope it’s the album cover; its so singular and direct, like Patti Smith’s Horses engineered for a new era.
Which brings me to the real point of this single: Rihanna is rapping! And it sounds good! Like she's stepping to the Game of all the boys in her league and stealing the show. "Your wife in the backseat of my foreign car"—hooooBOY, that is a fire lyric; that shit makes me wanna pull the fire alarm and whip my towel in the air like I just witnessed a filthy dunk during the NBA All Star Game. I would love to see her rap more often, and not just as a one-off like Beyonce on her "Flawless" remix with Nicki Minaj.
Anupa Mistry: FINANCIAL ADVISORIH! I’ve absorbed reams of financial wisdom from Rihanna over the years, and yet here I am waiting on outstanding checks (@AllMyEditors). “Bitch Better Have My Money,” which functions as both drinking anthem and summons, quells some of the outrage: invoicing’s wack, even when you’re getting that DreamWorks money.
Rihanna been knowing. On “Lemme Get That,” from Good Girl Gone Bad she preaches: “A girl need a lot, the girl need some stocks, bonds is what I got, BONDS IS WHAT I GOT.” And on her last album, 2012’s Unapologetic, having scaled bad bitchdom: “I’m fucking your cheap thrill, on top of my 50 mill’,” before the full sensory: “My fragrance on and they love my smell — I still got more money.”
I didn’t realize how much this messaging—women and girls being financially solvent, minus the moralizing—was absent until rewatching Working Girl, an Oscar-nominated 1988 film about a brilliant Wall Street secretary (Melanie Griffith) who gets played by her idea-stealing boss (Sigourney Weaver). Mel starts off apprehensive but is scene-stealing as an alpha, like purring this Riri-worthy lyric to a potential partner, “I have a head for business, and a bod for sin. Is there anything wrong with that?”
Girl power is dead. Who else has spent near a decade reminding today’s women that in a capitalist patriarchal society the best way to survive is to do you and get your own?
Meaghan Garvey: As anyone who has spent significant time freelancing is painfully aware, asking for money you are owed fucking suuuuuuucks. Typing my third, fourth, whatever follow-up email of “Hey there! Hope all is well! Just wanted to see if you’d ever looked into that check from four months ago. Thanks sooooo much! :)” A smiley face? A god damn smiley face! I got better at this stuff, as one does, but it’s still an act that requires a few minutes of pep talk, maybe involving a Nicki verse rapped quietly in the mirror or a GIF of Rihanna doing her little finger-shotgun dance. Look at these bad ass women: would Rihanna whimper like a fucking Teletubby when asking for money for which she worked her ass off? I'd already assumed the answer was an emphatic “fuck that,” but now it is official.
Corban Goble: All I have to say is "too soon." Me and Jeff Van Gundy are still mourning Zayn.
Ernest Wilkins: I'm willing to bet $30 that most reviews of this song will say it's "Kanye influenced" and using some variation of the following words: "trap", "gritty", "brash", "sexy".
