Music of the Sun is Rihanna's debut studio album that was released on August 19, 2005 by Def Jam Recordings.
Tracklisting
- Pon De Replay 4:06
- Here I Go Again (featuring J-Status) 4:11
- If It's Lovin' That You Want 3:28
- You Don't Love Me (No, No, No) (featuring Vybz Kartel) 4:20
- That La, La, La 3:45
- The Last Time 4:53
- Willing To Wait 4:37
- Music Of The Sun 3:56
- Let Me 3:56
- Rush (featuring Kardinal Offishall) 3:09
- There's A Thug In My Life (featuring J-Status) 3:21
- Now I Know 5:01
- Pon De Replay (Remix) (featuring Elephant Man) 3:37
Album Background
Recording
Composition
Chart Performance
In the United States, "Music of the Sun" sold 69,000 copies in its first week and debuted at #10 on the Billboard 200 in the chart issue dated September 17, 2005.
The album spent a total of 35 weeks on the chart. It debuted on Billboard's Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart at #6 in the same chart issue, and spent a total of forty-four weeks on the chart.
After five months of release, the album was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on January 1, 2006, denoting shipments of over 500,000 copies.
By the time Rihanna released her third studio album "Good Girl Gone Bad", the album had sold 539,000 copies, making it a slower selling album than the others in her repertoire.
As of June 2015, the album had sold 623,000 copies in the United States.
Critical Reception
"Music of the Sun" received generally mixed reviews from music critics.
Kelefa Sanneh of The New York Times viewed that the album's combination of dancehall and pop resulted in "["Pon de Replay" being] one [of] the summer's biggest and most seductive club tracks", but felt that Rihanna sounded "stranded" without a beat to sing along to.
Barry Walters of Rolling Stone found it lacking in replay value, ingenuity, and rhythm, with "generic vocal hiccups and frills" of US R&B inflecting upon her "Caribbean charm".
Sal Cinquemani of Slant Magazine called the album a "glut of teen R&B chanteuses" and described the lead single "Pon de Replay" as "a dancehall-pop mixture that owes plenty of its sweat and shimmy to Beyoncé Knowles' "Baby Boy."
Evan Serpick of Entertainment Weekly wrote that Rihanna's "vibrant vocals lift tracks like "That La, La, La" and "Let Me," but this bland reggae/R&B debut is filled with chintzy production and maudlin arrangements that block out the Music of the Sun."
Robert Christgau of The Village Voice rated the album a "dud," indicating "a bad record whose details rarely merit further thought."
In a positive review, Jason Birchmeier of AllMusic commented that the album presents Rihanna as "winsome rather than [a] wannabe," as well as how she managed to set herself apart from other urban dance-pop artists such as Ashanti, Beyoncé, and Ciara.
Birchmeier further stated that "[...] Music of the Sun descends into faceless slow jams after a while, overall consistency not being among its attributes, but thankfully it picks up the pace toward the end..... the result is one of the more engaging urban dance-pop albums of the year."
Chantal Jenoure of The Jamaica Observer complimented the dancehall and hip hop composition on several of the songs, including "Pon de Replay", "Rush", "Let Me", "Music of the Sun" and "That La, La, La", writing that they make the listener feel "happy" and "carefree."