rihanna
biography. exclusive in ebenezersamwel55.blogspot.com
Born Robyn Rihanna Fenty, on
February 20, 1988 in Barbados, Rihanna signed with Def Jam records at age 16
and released her first album, which sold more than 2 million copies worldwide,
in 2005. She went on to release more albums and hit songs, including
"Unfaithful," "Disturbia," and "Umbrella."
Rihanna has also won multiple awards including Grammys, MTV Video Music Awards,
and Billboard awards.
Contents
Singer. Robyn Rihanna Fenty was born
on February 20, 1988, in St. Michael Parish on the Caribbean island of
Barbados. She is the eldest of three children born to Monica Fenty, an
accountant, and Ronald Fenty, a warehouse supervisor. Rihanna's childhood was
marred by her father's struggles with addictions to alcohol and crack cocaine
and her parents' marital problems—they divorced when she was 14 years old.
However, since that time, Rihanna's father has managed to conquer his addictions
and the pair are now very close. "Now my dad is like the coolest person on
the planet," Rihanna says. "He doesn't smother me. He lets me live my
life. And he's been like that a lot, even when I was younger. He would watch me
making a mistake and he wouldn't stop me. My dad, he lets me make it and then I
learn." Rihanna also struggled with crippling headaches for several years
during her childhood, a condition she attempted to hide from her friends and
classmates so that they would not think she was abnormal. "I never
expressed how I felt," she remembers. "I always kept it in. I would
go to school ... you would never know there was something wrong with me."
As a teenager, Rihanna turned to
singing as a release from her troubles at home. She formed a girl group with
two classmates; when they were 15 years old, they scored an audition with music
producer Evan Rodgers, who was visiting the island with his Barbadian wife.
Rogers was awed by the precociously beautiful and phenomenally talented
Rihanna, to the unfortunate detriment of her two friends. "The minute
Rihanna walked into the room, it was like the other two girls didn't
exist," he admitted. Less than a year later, when Rihanna was only 16
years old, she left Barbados to move in with Rogers and his wife in Connecticut
and work on recording a demo album. "When I left Barbados, I didn't look
back," Rihanna recalled. "I wanted to do what I had to do, even if it
meant moving to America."
In January 2005, Rogers landed
Rihanna an audition for Def Jam Records and its newly minted president, the
legendary rapper Jay-Z.
"I was in the lobby just shaking," she recalled. However, once
Rihanna opened her voice to sing she regained her composure. "I remember
staring into everybody's eyes in the room while I was singing, and at that
point, I was fearless," she said. "But the minute I stopped singing,
I was like, 'oh my God, Jay-Z is sitting right in front of me.'" The
hip-hop icon was every bit as wowed by Rihanna's stunning voice and commanding
presence as Rogers had been two years earlier, and he signed her on the spot.
"We made
a little Godfather
joke," Jay-Z remembered. "We said the only way she could leave was
through the window." Only eight months later, in August 2005, Rihanna
released her first single, "Pon de Replay," a reggae-influenced club
track that skyrocketed to No. 2 on the Billboard singles chart and announced
Rihanna as the next big up-and-coming pop star. Her first album, Music of
the Sun, released later that month, reached No. 10 on the Billboard albums
chart and also featured the single "If It's Lovin' That You Want."
Rihanna released her second album, A Girl Like Me, the next year,
spawning two major hits in "Unfaithful" and "SOS,"
Rihanna's first No. 1 single.
In 2007, Rihanna effected a
transformation from cute teen pop princess to fully fledged superstar and sex
symbol with her third album, Good Girl Gone Bad, fueled by its smash hit
lead single "Umbrella," featuring Jay-Z. "It shows such growth
for her as an artist," Jay-Z said about the track. "If you listen to
the lyrics to that song, you know the depth and how far she's come."
"Umbrella" topped the Billboard singles chart and earned Rihanna her
first Grammy Award for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration. The album reached No. 2 on
the charts and also featured the singles "Don't Stop the Music" and
"Shut Up and Drive." Good Girl Gone Bad: The Remixes, released
the following year, scored two new further hits in "Disturbia" and
"Take a Bow."
Continuing her onslaught of hit
albums, Rihanna released Rated R in 2009 with the singles
"Hard" and "Rude Boy." Her most recent album, 2010's Loud,
was once again an enormous commercial and critical success behind the songs
"What's My Name," "Only Girl (In the World)" and
"S&M." Besides her own laundry list of hit songs, Rihanna is also
featured on a host of mega hits by other artists, including Jay-Z's "Run
this Town," Eminem's
"Love the Way You Lie" and Kanye West's
"All of the Lights."
Rihanna has also made headlines in
her personal life, although often for circumstances beyond her control. Rihanna
first made gossip column headlines in 2006 when rumors swirled that she was
having an affair with her mentor, Jay-Z. Both she and Jay-Z have always
dismissed such allegations as ridiculous. "At first I was like, 'Ha ha,
it's funny,'" Rihanna said. "Now I just ignore it and I'm numb to it.
You cannot stop people from saying what they want to say."
In 2009, Rihanna again made
headlines again, becoming the center of a media firestorm after a domestic
violence incident in which her then-boyfriend Chris Brown
assaulted her before an awards show. The incident sparked a huge public
outpouring of support for Rihanna, and she has since become a spokesperson
against domestic violence. "This happened to me," she said in an
interview
Rihanna was later romantically
involved with Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Matt Kemp, but the pair have since
split ways.
Since she first appeared on the pop
music scene in 2005, this Barbadian pop star has enjoyed a nearly uninterrupted
run at the top of the music industry. For nearly six years,
it has been virtually impossible to
listen to the radio or enter a dance club without hearing one of Rihanna's
infectiously catchy songs. But beyond the constant stream of hits and her
unflappable public image, Rihanna acknowledges that she is still just a
vulnerable young woman who has experienced much adversity in recent years, and
often struggles to keep it together. "I put my guard up so hard," she
said of the aftermath of her domestic violence incident with Chris Brown in
2009. "I didn't want people to see me cry. I didn't want people to feel
bad for me. It was a very vulnerable time in my life, and I refused to let that
be the image. I wanted them to see me as, 'I'm fine, I'm tough.' I put that up
until it felt real."
In 2012, Rihanna appeared to be
reconnecting with Brown. The pair worked together on the song "Birthday
Cake" released that year. Rihanna also spoke very candidly with Oprah Winfrey
about her relationship with Brown that August. She told Winfrey that Brown may
have been the love of her life and she has developed "a very close
friendship" with him.
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