Released in 2016, “Work” was a triumphant return to the Caribbean sound Rihanna had stepped away from upon her mainstream arrival. For the GRAMMY-nominated hit, Rihanna embraced the use of Patois as well as a sexually defiant, empowered point-of-view.

Rihanna’s single “Work” announces itself the same way steam rises. It bubbles, gulps and bellows upward until it reaches the surface; we’re already hot and sweaty by the time her voice arrives. The Barbados singer’s trance-like repetition of the word “work” grinds itself against the dancehall sound that first made her famous.

Released in 2016 as the first single from her eighth studio album, ANTI, “Work” was a return to roots. The track harkened back to the Caribbean musicality and pronunciation of her debut album, which had been slowly fazed out in favor of more pop-driven albums Good Girl Gone Bad and Rated R.

With “Work,” Rihanna brought dancehall culture and pathos into the mainstream, continuing the work of fellow Caribbean singers like Carroll Thompson, Ginger Williams and Donna Rhoden. By boldly using a Caribbean and Jamaican-influenced song as the lead single on ANTI, Rihanna made a political statement as much as a musical one. “Work” can be read as rejection of the whitewashing of her work and of the Americanized image created for her by Def Jam.

Rihanna was at a career high when “Work” was released, and the return to her origins pushed her to new heights. The song reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 — the first dancehall track to top the chart since”Rude Boy” in 2010 — and later earned nominations for Record Of The Year and Best Pop Duo/Group Performance at the 59th Grammy Awards.

Written by Jamaican American artist, PartyNextDoor and produced by Kingston, born Boi-1da, “Work” takes production cues from mid-90s Dancehall hits, the Beenie Man and Mr. Vegas collaboration “Badman Nuh Flee” and Sean Paul’s “Fit and Legit.” Boi-1da employs hand-claps, auto-tuned harmonizing, muffled piano and flute, as Rihanna shouts into the void. When added to samples of the late-90s hit “Sail Away (Riddim),” “Work’s” chorus, verse and bridge bleed into a single, pulsating orgy of sound.

The single was initially met with suspicion by American audiences, some of whom were confused by the simplicity of the song’s bare-bones composition and use of Patios, a West African-influenced creole language spoken in the Jamaican diaspora. This dialect can be heard in many modern rap songs, and Rihanna incorporated Patios in singles such “Rude Boy” and “Man Down.”

Her use of Patios was a step away from the manufactured, white-washed image created by the major studio machine and a return to her roots — all while continuing to embrace her sexually defiant, female point-of-view. In “Work,” Rihanna’s voice is steely and unbothered, yet vulnerable and present. The chorus’ monotony borders on a parody of the rinse and repeat pop “Work” inspired and elevated.

Rihanna makes clear her Caribbean intonation, delivering the lyrics to “Work” in a leisurely, laissez-faire style. What many white critics confused for simplicity or obscurification, Rihanna is simply singing for her people in the Afro diaspora. As Rihanna told Vogue of the song, “I felt like if I enunciated the words too perfectly, it would just not be the same attitude or the same sass… This song is definitely a song that represents my culture, and so I had to put a little twist on my delivery.”

“Work” can be loosely translated as a Jamaican patois for sex and this insider understanding drenches the song in a steamy subtext, making Rihanna’s repeated use of “work” a personal yearning for intimacy. The word “work” melds into itself, becoming a wordless amalgamation of sex and sweat, and the more Rihanna repeats herself, the more empowered the song becomes.

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Throughout Rihanna’s career, she has asserted herself within the praxis of power. Songs like “Bitch Better Have My Money,” “S&M” and “Rude Boy” show the singer consistently in control, delivering lyrics as raunchy and robust as Jamaica’s Ranking Slackness, who penned infamously double-entendre odes.

As Jamaican music scholar Frederick R. Dannaway wrote, “woman’s sexuality is a powerful force, and is slightly feared, from the days of Nanny Maroon who repelled bullets with her pum pum.” Rihanna has known this since she released her first single, “Pon de Replay,” a dancehall track with a title taken from Bajan Creole, the spoken language of Barbados.

In “Work,” Rihanna connects to dancehall’s legacy of sexual innuendo and erotic lyricism. That PartyNextDoor claims to have written the single as a break-up song shows the level of ambiguity and complexity Rihanna brings to the vocals.

Rihanna begins the song by showing her discontent with her current lover, echoing PartyNextDoor’s break-up intentions, “Dry! Me a desert him / Nuh time to have you lurking.” She feels used by her lover, who only sees her as a sexual conquest. But by the second verse, she expresses vulnerability, admitting her own mistakes in the seemingly toxic relationship, “Baby don’t you leave” and “If I get another chance to / I will never, no, never neglect you / I mean who am I to hold your past against you.”

Not everyone is up to the task of Rihanna’s table-setting skills. Drake fails to deliver as the song’s guest rapper, who tries to appear nonchalant with his slow, “rolled-out-of-bed” delivery. Rihanna could have easily made this a solo single, but her year’s worth of Drake dalliances make the rapper the perfect foil for her lyrics’ intended target. When his verse arrives, Rihanna has gone from disgruntled damsel to passion’s inevitability.

That “Work” is both infectious and unknowable, simple yet complex, is indicative of the identities attached to Millennials and continued by Gen Z. With “Work,” Rihanna created her definitive masterpiece of a long and storied oeuvre. That her greatest hit is a Caribbean riddim, only adds to Rihanna’s rich legacy as her generation’s ambassador and innovator in Caribbean music.