This magazine advertisement promotes Rihanna's fourth album "Rated R" which had a darker and more serious tone than her previous albums. The black and white image shows Rihanna looking mysterious and hiding something behind her hand. Only the names of two singles, written in red, stand out. The dark color scheme and gothic font suggest the music has a rockier and less upbeat sound. This new look was meant to portray Rihanna and the album's music in a more serious way and attract teenage and young adult listeners.

1. This is the magazine advert for Rihanna’s
fourth album ‘Rated R’, released in
November 2009. This has a completely
different look to her previous albums and
magazine album adverts, as they are
more feminine and sexy.
This advert’s context is very basic, it uses
the same image of her album cover to
promote it and make people remember it.
They obviously wanted to promote the
artist by focusing people’s attention on
the photograph and on her name, instead
of focusing it on the name of the album
which is in a really small font and hard to
read.In the image, her make-up is heavy
and dark making her look quite scary and
the way she poses, covering half of her
face with one of her hands makes her
look suspicious and intriguing. The way
she gives that dominant look, making eye
contact with the audience, suggeststhat she is hiding something, which attracts
people’s attention.
It is completely black and white giving quite an emo and gothic look, except for the
names of the two most popular singles of the album (‘Russian Roulette’ and ‘Hard’)
which are written in Red to grab the readers’ attention.This colour could connote in
this particular advert blood and danger. The colour scheme of this advert suggest
that her songs are quite crazy and dark and slow, meaning that the music is not that
upbeat and are quite rocky. The font of the writing is quite gothic, again representing
the album as quite dark and rocky and giving Rihanna a completely new look to what
she has been previously perceived and represented as.The 'R' also looks deranged
which compliments the songs of this album.
The darkness of the album could connote a stage that she is going through as her
previous album covers are full of colour. This album advert looks really serious,
which could be because she wants the audience to take her seriously.
The target audience for Rihanna’s album is for teenagers and young adults. This
album is particularly aimed at people around the age of 13-30. At the bottom of the
page we can see the record label’s logo (Def Jam Recordings) andits website in a very
small font size. This is because they want to focus people’s attention on the artist and
the new album instead of promoting the record label.