Loud has the misfortune of following Good Girl Gone Bad, one of the best pop albums of its decade, and Rated R, one of the most fascinating pop albums of the same time frame. That said, there’s enough quality content to maintain Rihanna’s visibility until her next truly eventful release. (This album, coming less than a year after Rated R, did not have much buildup.) The predatory StarGate/Sandy Vee-produced dance-pop (“S&M,” “Only Girl [In the World]”) is what works best here. Though neither one can touch “Rude Boy,” they do efficiently balance Rihanna’s playful and sinister sides. One song that sounds nothing like anything else in Rihanna’s past is “Skin,” a contender for anti-gravity slow jam of 2010 — a match for Trey Songz’s “Red Lipstick” and Usher’s “Mars vs Venus.” – Andy Kellman