Rihanna (8 page)

R
ihanna’s life is so madly busy that she doesn’t get to do some of the things the rest of us take for granted. If she wants to see a new movie that’s being released, then she usually has to wait for it to come out on DVD, because she has hardly any free time, and if she went to a regular cinema she’d be mobbed by fans; movie premieres really aren’t her thing either, so she wouldn’t just go to one so she could watch a movie without being hassled.  

Rihanna loves the movie
The Hangover
so much that she watches it again and again. She enjoys watching it with her friends or by herself, and she loves to scoff loads of ice cream or bags of Cheetos (cheese curl snacks).  

The TV show she can’t get enough of is
The First 48
, which is a documentary series about homicide and shows how detectives go about finding out who killed someone,
collecting evidence, interviewing people and using hi-tech methods. The opening to the programme states: ‘For homicide detectives, the clock starts ticking the moment they are called. Their chance of solving a case is cut in half if they don’t get a lead within the first forty-eight hours.’

Rihanna finds the show really interesting, and will watch episodes back to back when she can. It is rare for her to be able to watch her favourite shows as soon as they air, because they are normally transmitted when she’s on stage or at events: she has to either record them or buy the series DVDs when they are released.

I
n October 2009, Rihanna’s fans were treated to a gritty video less than a minute long in which she sang that the ‘wait is ova.’ The video was posted on her official website, and fans saw a new darker side to the star. The date ‘Nov 23 09’ was mentioned in the video and Rihanna tweeted: ‘The Wait Is Ova. Nov 23 09’ alongside a metallic ‘R’, but no one knew exactly what it meant. MTV tried to find out what was going to happen on 23 November, but Rihanna’s representatives refused to give any answers. In the end they guessed that it was the date she was going to release a new album. And they were right:
Rated R
came out in the US on 23 November, although it was released a few days earlier in Australia, Germany and Poland.

For
Rated R
, Rihanna worked with Simon Henwood,
an artist, author and director. Henwood was given the job of reinventing Rihanna, helping to design the logo for
Rated R
, styling the music videos and making sure that the image projected of her was consistent with what they wanted it to be. He had been the creative director behind Kanye West’s ‘Glow In The Dark Tour’ and had directed his video for ‘Love Lockdown’, which was nominated for three MTV Video Music Awards. Henwood first met Rihanna on Kanye’s tour, and about a year later, they discussed ideas for
Rated R
when she was in London.

They worked together as a team, each coming up with ideas for how things should look. They also worked with other great designers and even visited Paris Fashion Week for inspiration. Rihanna was open to Henwood’s ideas, but if she didn’t like something, she would tell him.

He was the one of the main contributors to the book,
Rihanna: The Last Girl on Earth
(2010), which was a collection of behind-the-scenes photographs. The idea behind the book was that it would show the journey Rihanna made, from the first logo design to the world tour. Some of the photos show her on a rooftop, admiring the views in Paris; they also show her shoe collection and depict Rihanna posing with mannequins, escaping the paparazzi, enjoying room service and performing on stage.

Rihanna told MTV what fans should expect from the book, and why she decided to publish one: ‘I think it was really special to have behind-the-scenes photos – you know, pictures that the fans haven’t seen before all together
of a very specific moment of my life, an album of my life. They just get to see all the things that they hadn’t seen that were going on behind the scenes – really cool stuff, not typical. They’re really fun photos. And even for me, when I look at them, they say so much. Photos really tell a thousand words.’

Her favourite photo in the book is one of her on stage wearing a headdress. The image has a green hue to it and Rihanna admits she calls it her ‘Disturbia’ photo.

The ideas Simon Henwood had as to how
Rated R
should be presented came from two main sources of inspiration. The first was a science fiction novel entitled
The Lathe of Heaven
by Ursula K. Le Guin. The plot centres round a character whose dreams have the power to change reality. His other inspiration was a 1971 movie called
The Omega Man
, which was based on the Richard Matheson novel,
I Am Legend.
Both the book and the movie gave him the idea of creating a world for Rihanna, a kind of dark dream that she could explore through her music. For the tour itself he wasn’t afraid to show dark elements in the visuals, from burning naked mannequins and guns to broken glass and metal.

Rihanna confessed to the Daily Star: “Rated R in comparison to my previous albums is different… It’s very honest, the sound is darker, I didn’t want to make the same album I did last time.

“I pay attention to (the fans’) comments, negative or positive. I want to keep them close with me and I want them to grow with me.”

In starting work on her fourth album only weeks after the attack, Rihanna managed to turn something negative into something positive by letting her feelings about what happened influence her songwriting.

She revealed to MSNBC: ‘It’s a really fearless album – a lot of people are saying things like, it’s dark, but it’s a very honest album and I made it in a very truthful way. I let my guard down in telling my story and being a little more vulnerable and expressing myself. I really vented in my music. I go through a lot of different music and moods in the album. You definitely will learn a lot about what’s going through my head.’

Rated R
was released on 20 November 2009. Its tone was much angrier than her previous albums –
Music of the Sun, A Girl Like Me
and
Good Girl Gone Bad
– and more edgy. She wanted something different and allowed herself to change direction. The album reached No. 4 in the US charts, No. 2 in the UK and No. 1 in Switzerland and Norway.

Rihanna explained how she came up with the album’s title, telling
W
magazine: ‘It was really personal, it was from me in the most authentic way. It’s like a movie, hence the title, in that when I was making this album – every day I was in a different mood. Sometimes I was pissed off, sometimes I was miserable, and every song brings out a different story.

‘It’s still hard to listen to certain songs, certain ones I couldn’t even record. I’d keep pushing them back [on the schedule].’

One of the hardest tracks to record was ‘The Last Song’, because it’s about saying goodbye to someone you love
with all your heart. Rihanna confessed: ‘When the label finally said we had 12 hours to turn in the album, I was like, “Okay, I have to do it.” I just drank some red wine, dimmed the lights, got in the booth and sang it.’

Evan Rogers, who has been with Rihanna since the beginning, was at first shocked by the album and admitted to journalist Danielle Stein: ‘This album was sort of like hearing your daughter using profanity for the first time. I’m not going to lie and say I didn’t have concerns about how her core audience would react.’

Ne-Yo also saw a new side to the singer and admitted: ‘When I first worked with her, on her second album, she was very – I don’t want to say obedient, because it sounds like you’re describing a dog – but she would take my suggestions without question.

‘She trusted me, which was cool, but I told her that I ultimately wanted to get to a point where she would give me input, where she’d be a collaborator and not a puppet. And now I think we’ve gotten there. She’s showing parts of herself that she didn’t show before because she didn’t want to scare anyone off. She’s experienced some pain now, and it’s helped her grow to a point where she’s able to explore it.’

Because Rihanna’s family are thousands of miles away in Barbados, she now has a second family made up of Jay-Z, L.A. Reid, Jay Bown, Tyran ‘Ty-Ty’ Smith, Melissa and her stylists. Carl Rogers and his wife consider Rihanna to be like a daughter to them and sometimes they want to protect her from certain situations.

Before
Rated R
came out, many fans believed that the
album’s tracks would be all about Chris Brown and the couple’s relationship, but this wasn’t the case. As Chuck Harmony, one of the producers, explained to MTV: ‘Whatever she came with, if she came out with “I still love you”, that would have been about Chris Brown. If she came out with “I hate your dog”, that would have been about Chris Brown, too. It’s just a natural reaction for people to associate ‘cause she’s been so tight-lipped.’

Even if Rihanna had wanted to write songs about her former boyfriend, more than likely her songwriters would have refused. Ne-Yo confessed to Jayson Rodriguez: ‘Chris Brown is a friend of mine and I don’t view him as a bad guy for what happened. It was an absolute mistake and he has some lessons to learn and some maturing to do, but I’m not gonna bash him for that. I’m not gonna turn my back on a person I call my friend because he made a mistake. [So] I can’t write the Chris Brown bash song and then turn around and look myself in the mirror.’

The album was recorded all over the world – in New York, London, Paris and Los Angeles. Rihanna’s favourite tracks were ‘Cold Case Love’ and ‘Fire Bomb’. She told
W
magazine: ‘I wanted this album to have more bass, more bottom, grimier beats – to be less synth-y/pop-y/dance-y.

‘My fans have until now been really young, like five years old to just before adulthood. But now older adults are into my music. Straight men, too! Men couldn’t really bump my last album in the car. With this album they can play it and still feel tough.’

Critics generally liked
Rated R
and it was given a score of 76 out of 100 from Metacritic (which looked at 20 reviews to give its score); Jim DeRogatis from the
Chicago Sun-Times
gave it three out of four stars, and Ed Potton from
The Times
awarded it four out of five stars. In his review, Ed Potton said: ‘By turns syrupy and strident, part lament, part tooled-up revenge fantasy, the best record Rihanna has made.’ Jody Rosen from
Rolling Stone
agreed and declared it was ‘one of the best pop records of the year.’

The tracks on the album were as follows:

1. ‘Mad House’
   
2. ‘Wait Your Turn’
   
3. ‘Hard’ (featuring Jeezy)
   
4. ‘Stupid in Love’
   
5. ‘Rockstar 101’
   
6. ‘Russian Roulette’
   
7. ‘Fire Bomb’
   
8. ‘Rude Boy’
   
9. ‘Photographs’ (featuring will.i.am)
   
10. ‘G4L’
    
11. ‘Te Amo’
    
12. ‘Cold Case Love’
    
13. ‘The Last Song’
    

If you look at the covers of Rihanna’s first three albums you will see a fresh-faced, happy girl showing her natural beauty, but for her fourth album,
Rated R
, she wanted
something totally different. She was keen to reflect the change in her music and told
Elle
magazine: ‘I wanted pictures that represented strength and fearlessness, but still femininity – a strong woman who can be vulnerable. Every woman is made up of vulnerability and strength – no matter what race you are, no matter what you’ve been through in your life. Every woman has that strength that is undeniable, but we also have really big hearts. It’s just us.’

She commissioned fashion photographer Ellen von Unswerth to take some edgy portraits of herself and then RiRi picked her favourite for the album cover. Ellen von Unswerth is one of the best photographers in the fashion business, and she has shot the cover art for albums by Britney Spears (
Blackout
), Christina Aguilera (
Back to Basics
), Janet Jackson (
The Velvet Rope
) and Dido (
Life For Rent
).

The picture that Rihanna and her label liked best was one of her looking incredibly moody. It was a close-up shot, Rihanna’s hand is covering up her right eye and she stares directly at the camera. One of her hands has several rings wrapped around her fingers, and she is wearing a leather outfit and dark make-up. It was shot in black and white, which made it seem almost aggressive, and they added in her ‘R’ logo in the top right-hand side corner. Many critics and bloggers noted how the
Rated R
cover was similar to singer Grace Jones’ album covers. MTV commented in an article: ‘[The] grainy black-and-white cover shot that leaked Tuesday (October 27) finds the singer in a moody, contemplative pose reminiscent of outrageous 1980s
avant-garde
singer Grace Jones.’

The running theme in the cover art for the
Rated R
singles was that Rihanna was semi-naked. They were risqué, but tasteful at the same time. For the cover of ‘Russian Roulette’ she wore a gold corset that blended in with her skin tone to make it look as if she was naked. Wrapped around her body was barbed wire and on her right eye was an eye patch with the middle of it cut out so you could still see her eye. Her right arm points straight upwards, where a metal chain hangs. The title is written in a blood-red font with the extra-large ‘R’ logo over it: the sharpness of the point at the base of the ‘R’ makes it look as if it could slice into Rihanna’s shoulder at any point.

MTV described the cover as controversial and the
Daily Mail
commented: ‘Her daring outfits mean Rihanna is in the news as much for her fashion choices as her music, but the star has managed to combine the two on her new album cover.

‘“Russian Roulette” sees the 21-year-old strip off, posing topless with nothing but a strip of wire wound around her chest to protect her modesty.’

For the ‘Hard’ cover she poses in a very revealing black bodysuit by designer Alexandre Vauthier, which only just covers her modesty. Her body is twisted towards the camera, her right elbow pointing upwards. Rihanna’s eyes are shut and she is standing in a room with cassette design wallpaper. Again, it is shot in black and white, with the ‘R’ logo smaller than in the ‘Russian Roulette’ cover art and now in the top left-hand side corner. The single title is in
red again, but appears like a stamp right across the middle of the cover.

Many fans and critics wondered what was going to come next, because with each single cover, she seemed to be removing more and more clothes.

For the ‘Rude Boy’ cover Rihanna was shown naked, but she used a large board with the single’s title on it to hide her modesty. She wore a pair of masculine black boots, a top hat and in her mouth was a cigarette. Some people criticised her for ‘glamorising smoking’ on the cover but her fans felt she wasn’t at all. She has smoked in several of her videos (‘Disturbia’, ‘Wait Your Turn’ and ‘Rude Boy’) but she isn’t telling her fans to do so – it’s just part of the character she is portraying in the videos.

Rihanna decided to go in a different direction with the cover art for ‘Rockstar 101’. This was a much less aggressive cover, with her face being the main focus. Her hair is blonde apart from a black band at the front, which is covered in black netting. The eye make-up is still dark, with a patch drawn over her left eye but her lips are painted nude. She has one weapon-like earring on her left ear. The cover for the remix album was identical apart from the background changing to purple, which lifts the colour in her face.

For her international single ‘Te Amo’, Rihanna returned to her dark side and posed with a finger to her lips and her face touching a mannequin. It was a cover that screamed seduction and had the ‘R’ logo in the top left-hand corner.