Making sense of Robyn Rihanna Fenty's evolution-or more accurately, morphing-from the 17-year-old former Barbadian beauty queen who emerged five years ago equipped with a handful of Caribbean-flavored pop songs, an elaborate system of Real Housewives hair, and a million-watt smile, into the asymmetrically-tressed, tattooed, futuristic pop hellion that she is today, is a complex undertaking. She has produced four wildly successful, increasingly adventurous albums-Music of the Sun (2005), A Girl Like Me (2006), Good Girl Gone Bad (2007), Rated R (2009)-as well as her latest, Loud (Def Jam), which, if the success of the first single, "Only Girl (in the World)," is any indication, appears on course to maintain the trajectory. As a result, she has emerged as a bona fide pop phenomenon: a performer audacious enough to sing on stage while splayed across a hot pink tank; a self-possessed woman who deftly brandishes her sexuality like a rapier; and a swaggering album-to-album changeling who reliably cranks out hit after hit touched by whatever happens to be the latest or greatest innovation in hip-hop and dance music songcraft in a given moment.
And like most 22-year-old, 21st-century pop stars, she's a polyglot, striving to make the Rihanna Proposition a diversified one by venturing into other areas like fashion and film (Rihanna is set to make her acting debut in Peter Berg's forthcoming action epic Battleship, which is, somewhat quizzically, based on the board game.). But, unfortunately, Rihanna has also become an icon of a different sort. This second aspect of the Rihanna Proposition stems almost entirely from the events of February 8, 2009, when she was forced to cancel a scheduled appearance at the Grammys after she was assaulted during an apparent argument with her then-boyfriend, singer Chris Brown. Photos of Rihanna with what appeared to be cuts and bruises on her face leaked online shortly thereafter, those images-graphic, violent, disturbing, and, sadly, real-are not the kind that anyone forgets too quickly.
Ever since the Brown incident, it has been difficult to discuss Rihanna, the pop star, without recalling Rihanna, the victim of domestic violence. But one of the great strengths of the Rihanna Proposition is its unrelenting forward momentum. Just as she has flitted from sound to sound and look to look from album to album, picking up and dropping trends, ideas, and tropes with an almost robotic efficiency, Rihanna, at least musically, isn't a dweller. Listening to Rated R or Loud, one doesn't experience the sensation of being submerged in a thick pool of rise-above moments.
There is very little gut-wrenching, out-lashing, or hand-wringing. There are no gurus name-checked or healing trips to India detailed. What there is is a visceral physicality, an R&B fierceness, a clubby infectiousness, and the ever-changing, vividly Technicolor coat of creative armor worn by a woman who has a very clear idea of what she's going to give you in the context of her work as a performer and what she's going to keep for herself-which, in a culture where the ongoing soap opera of celebrity life has become inextricably bound up with the idea of entertainment, the airing out of personal trauma has become a career move, and confession has become a meme, represents an almost quaint throwback of a concept.
Kanye West, Rihanna's longtime consort and collaborator, caught up with the singer in New York City as she prepared to promote the release of Loud with a performance on Saturday Night Live, where she showcased her latest look, having jettisoned the Grace Jones-manqué club alien mien of her last two records in favor of Kool Aid-colored red hair and a bright bikini-top-and-hotpants outfit that seemed like it could have been plucked from her new friend and fellow pop star Katy Perry's closet- and, true to form, she was busy making plans, contemplating next moves, and looking to the future.
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