Mercury, £12.99

The reign of an r&b diva can be as cruelly brief as the lifespan of a gnat. For every Alicia Keys there lies the career corpses of Blu Cantrell or Brandi. Beyoncé, at a mere 29, has the regal air of an elder stateswoman; Mary J Blige, at 39, seems positively geriatric while the latest contender, Will Smith’s daughter Willow, is still at primary school.

Rihanna, who symbolically scored her biggest hit Umbrella when Blige turned it down, seems to be at the top of her game, but churning out five albums in five years along with corresponding image makeovers, suggests the 22-year-old is leaving nothing to chance.

Loud is a swift return to the kind of sunny, upbeat pop bangers that preceded the Barbados-born singer’s brush with domestic violence and the resulting dark melodrama of her last album Rated-R.

In some ways, this is Rihanna’s most versatile set of songs, spanning lilting reggae grooves that reflect her Caribbean roots to the kind of AOR country ballads that Taylor Swift would sing.

Amid the shape shifting, Rihanna does an impressive job of stamping her own sassy, tomboyish personality on sometimes generic material, but it’s the collaboration with new girl on the block Nicki Minaj that seems to bring out her competitive best.