Doreen St. Félix of MTV News stated that
Anti was a "rock-star" album and was noted as a "banner for heterogeneity in R&B — the real range of it," continuing to state that in the early
2010s EDM was the popular genre. St. Félix stated in a more in-depth review that "
Anti could even change with the seasons, depending on which tracks you chose to listen to." Alexis Petridis of
The Guardian stated that R&B was in a "golden age" and 2016 "was its most potent year yet". Petridis stated that artists such as Rihanna pushed the genre's "boundaries", noting that
Anti was "sprawling, exploratory and opaque". The album's commercial performance, especially its streaming performance, was noted as helping R&B "flourish" again, along with Drake and Kanye West. Rihanna was cited as the second most streamed artist of 2016 overall, earning 795 million streams by June and was named the most streamed female of 2016 and 2017 by
Spotify.
Anti produced eight songs that topped the
Billboard Dance Club Songs chart — "Work", "Kiss It Better", "Needed Me", "Love on the Brain", "Sex with Me", "Pose", "Desperado" and "Consideration" — surpassing
Katy Perry's
Teenage Dream (2010) as the
album with the most number-one songs on that chart.
Rolling Stones journalist Brittany Spanos stated that Rihanna was one of three
black women, alongside
Beyoncé and
Solange, who "radicalized Pop in 2016". In an in-depth review, Spanos stated "the album is a startlingly direct statement from a black female pop star, one that many are not afforded the opportunity to express. In the media, black women are often cast as either jezebels or mammies – oversexed or undersexed with no choice as to how they are received. Rihanna's resistance to typecasting and her positive affirmation of her sexual agency made her the year's slyest rebel, a maverick living life as she pleases." Taj Rani of
Billboard stated "Work" has brought the genre of dancehall to the forefront of American music, as it became the first dancehall song to top the
Billboard Hot 100 since
Sean Paul's "
Temperature" reached the feat in 2006. She opined the song is a prime example of "an unapologetic black woman proudly showing her heritage at a time when
our politics are dominated by
#BlackLivesMatter and
Donald Trump's
racist,
xenophobic and
misogynistic tirades." Da'Shan Smith of
Billboard stated "Love on the Brain" became the most subtly influential pop single of 2017, as the music industry experienced "a prominent surge of retro-harkening balladry, across different musical genres", following the success of this song on pop radio; which he described as "a rare find today, because traditional R&B's presence on the format is an oddity."
Marilyn Manson cited
Anti as an influence on
his band's album
Heaven Upside Down, saying: "Strangely enough, one of the records that influenced this album strongly, and it can't be taken literally, is Rihanna, her last record. That one song, 'Love on the Brain', it really hit me because I saw her perform it and she just... meant it." Album track "Higher" inspired the song "
Liability" from New Zealand singer
Lorde's second album
Melodrama (2017), when Lorde was reportedly "moved to tears" listening to "Higher" and this helped her to write "Liability". Contemporary artist
Awol Erizku created a series of pieces inspired by musicians, one of the pieces was titled, "Same Ol' Mistakes," inspired by the song of the same name from the album
Anti. Referencing one of Rihanna's logos, Erizku spoke of how the song inspired his artwork, stating: "I always thought that logo was really funny. It's one aspect of pop culture that I thought fit in my world, Rihanna is a voice of our generation, one of our ideals of beauty. You can see these two things co-existing in the same environment." In 2020,
Rolling Stone ranked
Anti at number 230 on their
The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list. ==Track listing==