It's hard to imagine anyone being unsettled by what currently passes for rock stars. Historical fetishists like Jack White, anthemic inspirationalists like fun., and rootsy evangelists like Mumford & Sons use the language of rock to express broad emotions in conventional, unsurprising ways. Even in the lingering spaces where old-fashioned cock rock survives, it's much more likely that bloated egotists like Axl Rose, reality-TV stars like Bret Michaels, or media moguls like Chad Kroeger will be pitied, laughed at, or yawned over than that they'll upset or anger anyone. Rock's transgressive, parent-scaring edge was long ago handed over to hip-hop, and in the age of CEO rappers like Jay-Z and Rick Ross, hip-hop is looking less and less dangerous every year.

So it's kind of nice that Ke$ha is still able to provoke strong negative reactions. No pop star is more widely hated. There are the usual misogynist accusations of stupidity, sluttiness, and unattractiveness leveled against any woman in the public eye who dares to express a personality that's something other than relentlessly cheerful and game (see also: Kristen Stewart). But there are also slightly more reasonable-sounding complaints that she makes ugly-sounding, artistry-free music made even more obnoxious by its widespread popularity: the same complaints made by parents in every generation about the music their kids are playing too loudly. (There are also legitimate complaints about appropriating Native American culture and insensitivity to transgender issues, which obviously apply much more widely than one pop star.)

But Ke$ha actively courts the dislike. Her voice, flattened and shrilled by the AutoTune software for much of her first album, is often pitched at a deliberately jangling register even when it's not being manipulated. Her lyrics are full of provocative, childish insults and vulgar slang, and her attitude is often less that of a grown woman and more of a hyperactive teenager deliberately scandalizing authority figures. On the Internet, we call that trolling. In life, it has more of the quality of a dare—how obnoxious can she get and still be hugely popular?

Warrior, out this week, only occasionally pushes those limits. To a degree, this is because the two years since her debut album Animal and its inescapable single "TiK ToK" have seen the pop market reshape itself to one degree or another in her image. Her combination of big, dumb dance beats, party-to-death ethos, and glib provocation has been successfully imitated by peers like Katy Perry, LMFAO, Nicki Minaj, Rihanna, and Chris Brown, and even by elders like Britney Spears, Pink, Christina Aguilera, Usher, and Enrique Iglesias. But also, it's Ke$ha's "rock" album, and that means that her provocation is being made in the grooves of a far more settled tradition than the drunken-robot ecstasy of "TiK ToK" was.