In 2015, Rihanna became the first artist in history to have 100 million singles digitally downloaded and streamed. Interestingly, Unapologetic was the first Rihanna album to hit No. 1 on the pop charts. “Umbrella” topped the Billboard singles chart and earned Rihanna her first Grammy Award for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration. In 2007, Rihanna effected a transformation from teen pop princess to superstar and sex symbol with her third album, Good Girl Gone Bad, fueled by its smash hit lead single “Umbrella,” featuring Jay-Z. In early 2011 the album’s sexually provocative single “S&M” became her 10th number one Billboard hit—which made her, at age 23, the youngest artist ever to reach that milestone.
Their “FourFiveSeconds” is a pop-folk hybrid with a universal message about carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders. Another overlooked jam, her sultry “Can’t Remember to Forget You” duet with Shakira sees both stars trade lines about struggling to let go of an undeserving lover. Both larger-than-life productions won GRAMMYs for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration in 2010 and 2012, respectively.

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Her debut album, “Music of the Sun,” further solidified her presence, selling over two million copies worldwide and setting the stage for her meteoric rise in the years to come. Jay-Z was immediately captivated, signing her on the spot and launching her career in the music industry. Her journey from a small island to the bustling music scene of America marked the beginning of her transformational career. Relocating from her home in Barbados to Connecticut, she stayed with music producer Evan Rogers and his wife.
Rihanna returned to her more upbeat sound with her fifth studio album, Loud, which was released on November 12, 2010. The album debuted at number four on the Billboard 200 chart and sold 181,000 copies in its first week. The incident and its aftermath influenced her artistically, prompting her to begin work on her fourth studio album, titled Rated R, one month after the Grammy Awards. The reissue of Good Girl Gone Bad, subtitled Reloaded, was released on June 2; selling 63,000 copies in its first week, it helped the original album rise to number seven in the US. The resulting album, Good Girl Gone Bad, was released on May 31, 2007, to critical acclaim. Aiming to dismiss her girl-next-door image in favour of a more mature and rebellious persona, she worked with such producers as Ne-Yo, Timbaland, Justin Timberlake, and Tricky Stewart for the album.

• From addressing the aforementioned VMA incident in the forgiving “Innocent” to a toxic relationship in “Dear John,” Speak Now also hinted that her rose-colored glasses were cracked, but Swift (and her songwriting) was only becoming stronger because of it.
• In 2022, Rihanna advocated for reforming the global financial system to better address climate change and poverty, including providing aid to nations most affected by climate-related crises.
• The Super Bowl performance earned Rihanna five Primetime Emmy Award nominations, including one for Outstanding Variety Special (Live).
• Some songs, like “peace,” were recorded in just one take, capturing the essence and fragility in the song’s story, whereas the lyrics for the sun-drenched “august” were penned on the spot as Swift was in her makeshift home studio in Los Angeles.
• In June 2010, she collaborated with rapper Eminem on the single “Love the Way You Lie”.
• An interpolation of Toots and the Maytals’ 1966 song of the same name, Sister Nancy’s in-studio freestyle was laid over sparse rub-a-dub production, allowing her declaration of ambition and skill to ring loud and clear.

Many of her music videos were shot as short films exploring issues such as love triangles, abuse and substance abuse romance, including “We Found Love” and “Man Down”. The album’s lead single, “Diamonds”, topped the US Billboard Hot 100, becoming Rihanna’s twelfth number-one song on the chart. A synth-pop record with EDM and hip-hop elements, Unapologetic debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 with first-week sales of 238,000 copies, becoming Rihanna’s first chart-topping album in the US. Rihanna is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, with estimated sales of over 250 million records. “She continued to make incredible art and so this is a love song kind of through the lens of the motif of what she had to go through in her life and sort of the parallels that I feel in my own life.”

• It topped the Billboard Hot 100 for seven consecutive weeks and peaked at number two in the UK; it was also the latter country’s best-selling song of 2010.
• Since then, she’s released 12 studio albums, re-recorded four as “Taylor’s Version,” and cultivated one of the most feverish fan bases in music.
• Rihanna went on to collaborate with numerous fashion houses, including Dior, Stance, and Manolo Blahnik.
• Her swagger is boisterous in “Phresh Out the Runway,” “Jump,” and strip club anthem “Pour It Up,” but “Nobody’s Business” really drives home the album’s theme of being unbothered.
• To celebrate her success in the music business and beyond, Rihanna is releasing “R20” merch and a vinyl album boxed set, which are available for pre-order on her official online store.
• But Lover was more than any accolades could reflect — it was Swift’s transitional album in many ways, notably marking the first album that she owned entirely herself following leaving Big Machine Records for Republic Records in 2018.

Her first hit single was “Pon de Replay,” which peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard singles chart in 2005. This pivotal move allowed her to focus on honing her vocal talents and recording a demo album that would ultimately pave the way for her music career. Her third album, “Good Girl Gone Bad,” marked a significant turning point in her career, showcasing her growth as an artist and solidifying her image as a bold and edgy figure in music. The record also featured popular single “Where Have You Been,” as well as “You da One,” and title track “Talk That Talk.” “We Found Love” later won Best Short Form Music Video at the 2013 Grammys. The upbeat pop record featured her first radio hit, the club anthem “Pon de Replay,” which debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Since then, the singer has released seven more albums, which are all platinum or multi-platinum, making her one of the best-selling artists in the world.
Janelle Monáe featured Nancy not once but twice on 2023’s Album Of The Year-nominated The Age Of Pleasure, and sampled “Bam Bam” on “Water Slide.” In further recognition of her impact, Burberry asked Sister Nancy to participate in their spring/summer 2024 campaign, which was shot in Jamaica. She’s performed on global stages and can be seen regularly at New York hotspots such as Union Pool, Public Records, and S.O.B.’s. After hearing Nancy on Hot 97’s “Ebro In The Morning,” Jay-Z flew the legend to Jamaica to sing and feature in his hybrid music video-documentary. Kanye West prominently sampled “Bam Bam” in the Rihanna-featuring “Famous”; Nancy’s chorus comes in midway through the song, adding an ethereal quality to West’s braggadocio. With her rights restored, Sister Nancy’s trajectory changed dramatically in the latter half of the 2010s — due in no small part to nods and samples from two of hip-hop’s biggest artists. “I just couldn’t take no more. I just say it’s time for me to be compensated, and I just did what I had to do,” the icon says of her legal battle for royalties.
Redefining its titular term, the four-week chart-topper finds the husky-voiced T-Boz freely admitting to straying from an unaffectionate relationship, proving that the playa anthem wasn’t solely the reserve of their male counterparts. But the song itself did pip fellow superstars Prince, Billy Joel and Lionel Richie to the Best Male Pop Vocal Performance crown. Backed by some fast and furious fiddles, “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” tells the tale of a young musician named Johnny who bumps into Beelzebub himself during a jam session in the Peach State.
It topped the Billboard Hot 100 for seven consecutive weeks and peaked at number two in the UK; it was also the latter country’s best-selling song of 2010. In June 2010, she collaborated with rapper Eminem on the single “Love the Way You Lie”. In support of the album, Rihanna embarked on the Last Girl on Earth tour from 2010 to 2011. The single “Rude Boy” peaked atop the Hot 100 for six weeks, while “Russian Roulette” and “Hard” both peaked betista casino within the top ten.

Loud

The Western-themed “Desperado” lends itself particularly well to covers by country artists, while the Dido-sampling “Never Ending” conveys the uncertainty she feels about entering a new relationship. Subsequently, Rihanna held the No. 1 spots on the Billboard 200 and Hot 100 simultaneously, her second time achieving such an impressive feat. But the dancehall masterpiece is one of a kind for Rih’s refusal to water down the Jamaican patois (different from her native language of Bajan Creole) — proving that she is fully aware of her impact as one of the biggest Caribbean-born artists to make it in the U.S. ANTI lives up to its name in its first 40 seconds, via opening track “Consideration.” The minute she declares, “I got to do things my own way, darling,” it’s apparent that ANTI is not your average Rihanna album. But that shift began with 2015’s criminally underrated “American Oxygen.” Her most political statement at the time, the goosebump-inducing lyrics detail Rihanna’s journey as an immigrant, foreshadowing her then soon-to-be massive Fenty Beauty success.

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Off stage, though, she was falling in love again — this time with someone who championed her just as much as the fans did in the areas. It’s apt that she would turn to Max Martin and Shellback, her 1989 and reputation collaborators, to bring that same captivating pop soundscape to The Life of a Showgirl and to capture some of the energy Swift was experiencing. And after two decades in the business, the 14-time GRAMMY winner is giving everyone a glimpse of what she describes as “the most infectiously joyful, wild, dramatic” chapter of her life thus far.

Lover: Stepping Into The Daylight

The two officially dated again for a time, with Rihanna maintaining in a Rolling Stone interview that Brown had changed and that any form of abuse would be unacceptable. In 2009, Rihanna was the center of a media firestorm after a domestic violence incident in which her then-boyfriend Chris Brown assaulted her before an awards show. Prior to that, she was in an on-again-off-again romance with longtime collaborator Drake for more than 7 years, starting in 2009. Most notably, she owns the popular cosmetics line Fenty Beauty, which she launched in 2017.
Looking at Lover retrospectively, it’s an album that almost symbolizes a bookend in her discography. Writing reputation became a lifeline following the events that catalyzed it  — a way to shed the so-called snakeskin and make peace with however the public wanted to view her. And even despite matching the 1.2 million first-week sales of her previous releases, some concluded that the album was her first commercial failure when compared to 1989. Even after Swift spent some time away from the spotlight, the public didn’t immediately gravitate toward her return.
Although Jay-Z initially thought “Pon de Replay” was too big for a new artist, he invited her to audition. Rihanna’s demo was sent to rapper Jay-Z, who had just become the president and CEO of the record label Def Jam Recordings. In 2005, she became the first artist to sign with Syndicated Rhythm Productions, the production company founded by Rogers and Carl Sturken. Unnamed and without original material, the girl group auditioned for American producer Evan Rogers, who recalled that “the minute Rihanna walked into the room, it was like the other two girls didn’t exist”. Though she initially planned to finish high school, she ultimately dropped out at age 16 to pursue a music career. Signed to Def Jam Recordings, she debuted with the Caribbean-inspired records Music of the Sun (2005) and A Girl Like Me (2006), both of which reached the top ten of the US Billboard 200.

Eminem feat. Rihanna — “The Monster”

It was a very vulnerable time in my life, and I refused to let that be the image. In addition to being a talented recording artist, Rihanna is a billionaire entrepreneur with multiple successful business ventures. Rihanna’s latest work, Anti, arrived in January 2016, topping the mainstream album chart for two weeks. In June 2007, Rihanna released her third album, Good Girl Gone Bad, to much fanfare. The album’s second single, “If It’s Lovin’ That You Want,” made it into the top 40. Rihanna released her debut album, Music of the Sun, in August 2005.
Eventually, her bold move to the United States at 16 years old marked the beginning of her journey to stardom, as she pursued her passion for singing and songwriting with determination. Despite these difficulties, Rihanna showcased resilience and creativity from a young age, channeling her personal experiences and pain into music. She is the eldest of three siblings, navigating a childhood fraught with challenges, including her father’s struggles with substance abuse and her parents’ tumultuous marriage, which ultimately ended in divorce when she was just 14. Rihanna, born Robyn Rihanna Fenty on February 20, 1988, in St. Michael Parish, Barbados, is a globally renowned pop star, singer, and fashion icon.

In addition to her musical career, Rihanna acted in the movies Battleship (2012) and This Is the End (2013). In 2023 she returned to the stage for the first time in some four years, performing at the Super Bowl halftime show. Included in the total were prominent collaborations with hip-hop artists T.I. The album that followed later that year, Rated R, much of which she cowrote, was marked by icily stark production and brooding lyrics that touched on revenge. With the effervescent dancehall-inflected single “Pon de Replay” (2005), Rihanna immediately captured an international audience.
She recalled performing Carey’s 1993 song “Hero” at her high school talent show. Rihanna praised Madonna’s ability to change her fashion and music repeatedly, while remaining a “real force in entertainment”. On Talk That Talk (2011), Rihanna expanded on her dance-pop style while adopting a more overtly sexual persona and incorporating elements of R&B, hip-hop, dancehall, and dubstep. Aiming for artistic growth, A Girl Like Me expresses personal experiences that typical young adult women undergo, with ballads that were described as elegant and mature. Rihanna’s early dancehall roots are evident on her first two albums, Music of the Sun (2005) and A Girl Like Me (2006). In Barbados, Rihanna drew early inspiration from reggae, soca, and hip-hop, and after relocating to the US, she was introduced to a wider variety of genres, including rock.