What a fascinating career Rihanna has already had.

By 2008, she had sold more than 12 million albums worldwide and notched more #1 singles than any other woman this decade (or century, or millennium). And she was just 19 years old, having gone from an unknown schoolgirl in a small town in Barbados to an international megastar.

And then, on the night of the 2009 Grammys, she became the most famous victim of domestic violence since Tina Turner when her boyfriend, singer Chris Brown, viciously beat her during an argument in his car. The pictures of Rihanna following the incident were horrific, as was the prospect of her returning to Brown’s side — which she did, briefly, before thinking better of it and leaving him for good.

Now, after nine months of silence, Rihanna has returned to the spotlight, first in an interview about the February incident on 20/20 and, more significantly, with Rated R, her fourth studio album.

Rihanna could have ignored the elephant in the room and put out another album of hook-heavy pop songs — something to rival the fabulous Good Girl Gone Bad, probably the best album of its kind I’ve heard. She also could have tapped into the sadness and pain following that difficult night and recorded an album of poignant ballads. But what she did instead is something altogether more interesting.

Rated R is visceral and dark, a primal scream of sad anger. Its songs are alternately swaggering with bravado and throbbing with the ache of a fresh bruise. The carefree, pretty girl whose first album was titled Music of the Sun has delivered a pitch-black masterpiece that explores her painful descent without once directly addressing it.

Rihanna, who shares writing credits on nine of the albums 13 songs, tackles her battering through violent metaphor.

In the first single, ‘Russian Roulette,’ returning to a dangerous man is compared to spinning the cylinder of a revolver and pulling the trigger:

In ‘Fire Bomb’ the narrator drives a flaming car into her lover (and his house):

In ‘G4L,’ Rihanna leads a gang of angry women with “guns in the air”:

Those aren’t the only songs that seem inspired by the incident: ‘Stupid in Love,’ ‘Photographs’ and ‘Cold Case Love,’ three well-crafted ballads, deal with a lost love in what can best be described as wistful defiance.

I’ve always found it silly that the words “shit” and “ass” are silenced on two tracks of Good Girl Gone Bad. I suppose the record company went that route to avoid having to slap a “Parental Warning” sticker on the album and threaten sales to a younger audience. Rated R, though, is playing by different rules, very much living up to its title.

Rihanna’s new persona is hard-edged and foul-mouthed… she’s Grace Jones meets, well, Rihanna. As she puts it on an early track, “I’m such a fucking lady,” making wonderful use of the Barbadian accent — thick with attitude — that she’s masked on previous albums. She’s not inviting anybody to stand under her umbrella this time around, even as she plays off of her most famous song, repeating the phrase “That Rihanna reign won’t let up” in the propulsive ‘Hard.’

Even the sexy come-on song ‘Rude Boy’ strikes an attitude, as she taunts her lover: “Come on rude boy, boy can you get it up? Come on rude boy, boy is you big enough?” I have a feeling if I were brought before Rihanna in her current state, my answer to both questions would be a resounding no.

I have no doubt this album will be less of a hit than its predecessor, and I’m sure Rihanna knows that too. It’s hard to picture people dancing in a club to heavy songs about violent revenge. A large segment of Rihanna’s audience will likely be thrown by this new direction. But that’s all the more reason I applaud her effort. She has taken the most horrible event in her young life and turned it into a complex work of art.