Battered and bruised - but certainly not broken. Springing back with fierce resilience, Rihanna embraces turning 21, by unleashing some pretty R-rated stuff. Parents, cover your kids’ eyes!

One year ago, last February; my heart was aflutter with excitement. Like droves of my countrymen, Ihad dutifully purchased tickets for Rihanna’s inaugural concert in Malaysia and was counting the days to chiming along to her ridiculously pandemic ‘Um-be-rella – ella ella eh’. Then came the shattering news: the R&B superstar had been assaulted by her ignoble miscreant of a boyfriend, Chris-****ing Brown.

As Ireeled in shock and cast all sorts of non-too-PG rated indignant aspersions at that (con) artist, Iwondered how Rihanna was holding up. That too, in the face of intense, public probing and revealing photographs of her swollen, welt-ridden face. As Rihanna herself aptly put it “Iwent to bed as Rihanna and woke up as Britney Spears.”

Battered and bruised - but certainly not broken. Springing back with fierce resilience, Rihanna embraces turning 21, by unleashing some pretty R-rated stuff. Parents, cover your kids’ eyes!

Barbados Babe
Robyn Rihanna Fenty grew up in the sun-soaked utopian enclave of Barbados, the product of a strong, hard-working mother and an abusive, crack cocaine addicted father. When she was a wee teen singing in a group with a bunch of girlfriends, she caught the eye of record producer Evan Rogers who famously said “The minute Rihanna walked into the room, it was like the other 2 girls didn’t exist.” You gotta feel sorry for the 2 other girls but still who can stand in the way of star potential?

With her singing career on the cusp of flowering, Rihanna took the next, most obvious step – jetting back and forth between Rogers’ home in LA and her native Barbados, to record her demo. It’s a good thing she did because her amateur effort landed in the hands of Def Jam’s Jay-Z, who literally signed her on the spot – “He (Jay Z) told me “There’re only 2 ways out. Out the door after you sign this deal, or through this window...” And we were on the 29th floor. Very flattering.”

That deal eventually translated into a humongous, whopping success. Rihanna’s debut album, Music of the Sun birthed the hit ‘Pon de Replay’, which got her face and name out there. The follow up to that album, A Girl Like Me spawned mega mammoth triumphs in the ilk of the catchy ‘SOS’ and the melodious ‘Unfaithful’. But the cherry on Rihanna’s musical cake was to take form in her 3rd studio effort, Good Girl Gone Bad where she emerged as a sort of Renaissance Woman, hawking off her long golden locks in favour of a more androgynous, brunette crop. Her sense of style developed and took on a life of its own, while her songs… well, who couldn’t get enough of ‘Umbrella’ ‘Shut Up and Drive’ and ‘Don’t Stop The Music’?
The girl was clearly on her way to the top, with a Grammy under her belt for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration and a new boyfriend on her arm. That is until, the new boyfriend decided to make her his personal punching bag.

The Incident
Last February, one day before the Grammys (where Rihanna and whats-his-face were scheduled to perform), reports emerged that the singer had been attacked by her then-boyfriend, who was alleged to have bitten her left ear, punched her face and attempted to choke her to the point of unconsciousness. These reports were later backed up with photographic evidence of her bruised face and eyes closed in pain with tears evidently on the verge of leaking all over her beautiful mien.
As a result of the media circus generated post-attack, Rihanna went into hiding and was rarely seen and hardly photographed, only emerging from her cocoon many months later to finally speak about her ordeal and talk about her new album, Rated R.

Moving On
Finally ready to talk about what happened on that fateful day, Rihanna delved into the public arena with all guns blazing in a vertiginous array of interviews. In a recent interview with The Guardian, she said, “It just felt like it was a wake-up call for me and it had to happen. Even for him, like, he knows now that he’s never going to do that again.” As if he would dare – he’s committed career suicide, as it is. Still, this must have been a painful admission, given that Rihanna publicly declared to Diane Sawyer on ABC’s Good Morning America, that Chris Brown was her, “First, big love.” In an interview with GQ, she laid her soul bare, saying “The physical pain comes and goes. The bruises fade away. But the emotional scars stay with you.”

Rated R
Which brings us to her latest album – Rated R. In tribute to its title, the album is a lot darker, with hints of edginess and underlying tension (“While you getting your cry on, I’m getting my fly on” in ‘Hard’), which speaks volumes about the singer’s personal dilemmas over the past year. In the February 2010 issue of W magazine, she talks about the emotional rollercoaster she succumbed to during the making of the album. “Everyday I was in a different mood. Sometimes I was p**sed off, sometimes I was miserable – every song brings out a different story.”

Still, even though she could have capitalised on her turmoil with a litany of poignant love songs, she did just the opposite. “When I was about to start the record, that was the first thing I said: ‘I don’t want no sad songs. I don’t want no songs about love.’ I turned away eight ballads: ‘I don’t want to do that, that’s totally expected,” she elaborated in a recent interview with The Scotsman.

Clearly looking to explore the unexpected, her image has also taken a more hardcore turn with a well-publicised visit to a tattoo artist, which resulted in the image of a gun being seared into the skin under her right armpit - a clear message to the ex, perhaps? She is also noticeably, viscerally more Gothic. “Cruella de Vil, from 101 Dalmatians, is my new style icon. She’s just fly,” she said in The Guardian interview, disturbingly associating herself with a puppy killer!

Perhaps it is this brush with the more tangibly unpopular people in everyday life, which has resulted in a taste for the wild side. In the January 2010 cover of GQ, Rihanna appears semi-nude, a feat she replicates in the pages of the recent issue of W magazine and on the cover for her single ‘Rude Boy’, in which she wears nothing more than a banner proclaiming the album title as a cigarette dangles jauntily from her lips. In fact, nearly all her recent publicity shots feature her almost completely stark naked, which assumes 2 things: she doesn’t care what people think; and she’s completely comfortable in her own skin.

Thumbs up, Ri-Ri!

These Days
Aside from her music and fashion inclinations, Rihanna has confirmed that she will come out with a tell-all book, Rihanna: The Last Girl on Earth sometime this June. If the contents of the book are as juicy as her life have been lately, you can expect an instant bestseller! On the romantic front, she has been rumoured to be dating baseball player Matt Kemp, whom she was seen kissing in Mexico. Hopefully, the rumours are true because she finally deserves someone good in her life, after that horrible, tawdry ordeal with her previous buffoon of a boyfriend.

But it is perhaps that sour experience, which has given her the wisdom and courage to move on and face life under the brutal public spotlight. As Rihanna says pragmatically “Before, young girls would look at me and they thought my life was perfect but now they realise that it’s not. Nobody’s perfect. I’m living the same human life that they are, just with a more public career.” And by all indications, she’s living it exceedingly well.


Did you now?
•  If Rihanna hadn’t gotten into the music business, she would be in school studying psychology!
• She won her high school beauty pageant and was crowned Miss Combermere (the name of her school).
• Rihanna is a very fussy eater – she will not touch vegetables, nor Mexican, Chinese, Indian or Japanese food!
• she doesn’t get along with girls and prefers the company of her “million” guy friends.
• According to a survey conducted among 200 Boston teenagers, nearly 50% said she was to blame for the attack by Chris Brown!
• She was recognised by a fan, while getting a bikini wax!


Really, Rihanna?
In 2007, when asked whom she would like to work with:
“Um, yeah, I would love to work with Chris Brown.”

On rumours that she and Jay-Z are more than friends:
“It was like, ‘Of course she had to give Jay-Z a b*** j** to get that deal.’ That rumour was everywhere in Barbados and it was so disgusting. It made me feel really weird – I would even be weird around Jay-Z. I wasn’t able to look him in the eye.”

On finishing ‘The Last Song’ (which details a break-up from a great love) on her Rated R album:
“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.”

On speaking out about domestic abuse and being a voice for young girls:
“It’s not about Chris, about hurting him or sabotaging his career. I don’t care about that part of it.”

On the part of her body she loves best:
“My bum. And I keep working on it as I want it to be perfect. It makes my clothes look good – and guys like it too!”