It is truly a great year to be an Ariana fan. In the midst of her sold-out tour for her first album in four years, she is also headed to theaters in November to star in the upcoming Focker In-Law. But today, she’s blessed us with Petal, her highly anticipated eighth studio album. And what an album it is.

Co-written and produced entirely by Grande alongside longtime collaborators Max Martin and Ilya Salmanzadeh, Petal layers her signature vocals over experimental production to build a world of raw emotion, desire, and unflinching honesty. She’s not the grateful pop star or the heartbroken girl. She’s a different Ariana, and it translates in all ways, vocally, musically, and especially lyrically. “I wrote from a place that I don’t usually, which was like an unfiltered rage,” Grande has said in an interview with Apple Music. “This kind of just feels like, ‘Fuck it.’”

At first glance, her promised “rage-filled album” felt like a sugar rush; but the lyrics are ruthless. “I will find my way from you like flowers from a tomb,” she sings, alongside harder truths: “All of my favorite stories end in catastrophe,” “I’m practically drowning in my blessings,” and a warning: “Good luck on your way to hell.”

Petal moves between extremes, and that’s where the album’s real tension lives. The first half swings between fury and seduction, between calling out the machinery that grinds her into content and surrendering completely to desire. By the time we hit “like i do,” she’s made peace with both impulses happening at once—the come-on delivered as threat, sex as power. The album doesn’t soften until the final track. Even “big feelings,” which could be a love song, is really about the transaction: she’s made someone fall harder than she has, totally okay with that asymmetry.

Petal is horny in a way her last few albums weren’t. The sexuality is direct and unapologetic, stating fact rather than trying to seduce. This sexuality sits alongside fury, both trying to serve the same purpose of control. Both are a refusal to be polite or grateful or small, asserting power rather than asking for it.

Ilya’s production amplifies this tension. His synths crackle and malfunction throughout: “hate that i made you love me” is sparse and eerie, while “like i do” descends into something industrial and dark. The title track pairs a fractured melody with a Portishead-style rhythm. “Never Get Over Me” has icy funk with a siren-like production detail. Even the straightforward moments, like “bad thing (bunny hop),” veer into new wave, while “big feelings,” luxuriating in sultriness, sounds like nothing else in her catalog. The sole exception is “nowhere, nobody,” the album’s prettiest, most wistful moment, and the only place where she admits uncertainty, and even then, she chooses to stay.

This is not the Eternal Sunshine Grande. Her sister is darker, moodier, way more blunt, and allows herself to feel her emotions to the fullest. Likely the biggest musical departure of her career thus far, this album is also her most musically and lyrically accomplished. She continues to grow as a virtuoso singer and vocal powerhouse, soaring to the top of her range and the charts with ease, while also showing nuance in her emotion and the innovation she’s shown on the elaborate Eternal Sunshine tour. Eight albums into her discography, Ariana Grande continues to surprise.

Petal is out now via Babydoll Music/Republic Records.