A pop and reggae album, A Girl Like Me peaked at number five on the Billboard 200 chart, with 115,000 copies sold in the US in its first week. Impressed, Rogers arranged a second meeting with Rihanna and her mother—this time without the other two girls—and later invited them to his hometown in Connecticut to record demo tapes for record label submissions. Around this time, Rihanna began listening to reggae artists such as Sizzla and Damien Marley, as well as R&B musicians like Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey. She is the highest-certified female digital single artist by the Recording Industry Association of America, and has seven diamond-certified singles and fourteen number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100. These albums contained the US number-one singles « Rude Boy », « Only Girl (In the World) », « What’s My Name? », « S&M », « We Found Love », « Diamonds », and « Work ». The albums spawned the singles « Pon de Replay » and « SOS », which peaked at numbers two and one on the US Billboard Hot 100, respectively.

The Rihanna Essentials: 15 Singles To Know

In August 2021, Forbes announced that Rihanna had become one of the richest entertainers in the world, estimating her net worth to be $1.7 billion at the time following the success of her cosmetic company. In lieu of another album, the singer-turned-entrepreneur, born Robyn Fenty, launched Fenty Beauty in 2017 in partnership with luxury goods conglomerate LVMH, which also preceded a short-lived luxury fashion line. « 20 years ago, i left my country, my culture, my food, and family to embark on a journey that started with the release of my very first body of music! » she wrote in an Instagram caption alongside a montage of her biggest career moments. Rihanna officially becomes a billionaire and Forbes names her the ‘richest female musician’

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• It’s been used in film and television, including prominently in 1998’s Nas- and DMX-featuring Belly.
• It was a very vulnerable time in my life, and I refused to let that be the image.
• Oldfield was rewarded for helping to scar a generation of moviegoers for life when a condensed version of his eerie masterpiece picked up the Best Instrumental Composition GRAMMY in 1975.
• « 20 years ago, i left my country, my culture, my food, and family to embark on a journey that started with the release of my very first body of music! » she wrote in an Instagram caption alongside a montage of her biggest career moments.
• He highlighted her multifaceted career, « from her business achievements through Fenty to her tremendous record as an activist and philanthropist ».
• Transitioning from a teen pop sensation to a mature artist, Rihanna’s work reflects her evolving artistic vision.
• Seven years into an already extraordinary career, 2012’s Unapologetic became Rihanna’s first album to debut at No. 1 on the all-genre Billboard 200 chart.

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. She is also a businesswoman who owns multiple ventures, including the popular cosmetics line Fenty Beauty and the lingerie brand Savage X Fenty. For her work on the single, Rihanna received her first Academy Award nomination, for best original song. Rihanna began working on a new record, but the project was delayed as she took a break from music.
Her musical career has been marked by experimentation, and she has stated that her goal was « to make music that could be heard in parts of the world that I’d never been to ». She began vocal training during the recording of Good Girl Gone Bad (2007) under the guidance of Ne-Yo, who taught her breathing techniques and vocal delivery. The song earned her nominations for the Golden Globe and Academy Award for Best Original Song. Alongside Donald Glover, she starred in the film Guava Island (2019), in which she played his character’s love interest.
« And it turns out that’s not the case at all … and we just were catching lightning in a bottle with this record. » « I used to kind of have this dark fear that if I ever were truly happy and free being myself and nurtured by a relationship, what happens if the writing just dries up? What if writing is directly tied to my torment and pain? » she said ahead of the album’s release. « Wood » is Swift taking cues from fellow showgirl Carpenter, winking at listeners as she weaves as many innuendos about the word as possible. « The Fate of Ophelia » might be Swift’s best lead single since « Mine » in 2010, thanks to its infectious beat and memorable chorus.
On the Life of a Showgirl track directly named after the late icon, Swift circles back to the themes she touched on with folklore’s « Peace » and the tension between her private reality and her public persona. While half of The Life of a Showgirl’s 12 tracks peer into the darker corners of fame and explores the loneliness, scrutiny and fractures that used to come with it, the other half are dedicated to falling completely head over heels. And on The Tortured Poets Department’s « The Prophecy, » she pleaded for someone to change what she believed to be her predestined future of being alone and what she’d give up to find someone she loves.
Instead, she wanted to capture the years of her life while they still represented what she was going through, writing about what she was observing and experiencing, from love and friendship to feeling like an outsider. Written throughout her adolescence, Taylor Swift was recorded at the end of 2005 and finalized by the time Swift finished her freshman year of high school. In a genre dominated by men, the odds were already stacked against Swift when she first broke into country music as a teenage female artist.
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. »

• In August 2018, Billboard ranked Rihanna as the tenth-most successful Hot 100 artist of all time and it also named her the top Hot 100 artist of the 2010s.
• Instead, she wanted to capture the years of her life while they still represented what she was going through, writing about what she was observing and experiencing, from love and friendship to feeling like an outsider.
• No longer was she the girl writing songs like « Fifteen » in her bedroom — now she was working through becoming a highly publicized figure.
• Rose is a high-society young woman who is being forced into a loveless marriage with a wealthy man.
• Jay-Z was immediately captivated, signing her on the spot and launching her career in the music industry.
• Rihanna has been described by the media as a pop and fashion icon, particularly since the release of Good Girl Gone Bad (2007).

In 2016, it was confirmed that Rihanna would release her music through her own label, Westbury Road Entertainment, founded in 2005 and named after her childhood home in Barbados. Including Beyoncé and Jay-Z, 16 artist stakeholders co-own Tidal, most of whom own a 3% equity stake. He highlighted her multifaceted career, « from her business achievements through Fenty to her tremendous record as an activist and philanthropist ».
From becoming the first woman and only artist to win a GRAMMY for Album Of The Year four times, to dealing with heightened media scrutiny, to breaking records with her Eras Tour, no one understands the highs and lows of being a showgirl like Swift. Fans rejoiced at having songs to comfort them during difficult times, and artists like Maya Hawke, Gracie Abrams, and Sabrina Carpenter credit folklore for inspiring them to create and be even more emotionally honest in their songwriting. Other songs, including « Death By A Thousand Cuts » and « Cornelia Street, » are Swift at her most vulnerable, reflecting on a love lost and grappling with the extreme worry that comes when you could potentially lose someone. When Swift released the lead single « Look What You Made Me Do, » a song she initially wrote as a poem about not trusting specific people, many assumed the album would center on vengeance and drama. The album also earned Swift several awards — including her second Album Of The Year GRAMMY, which made her the first female artist to ever win the award twice.

Acting Career and Appearances

The song’s success buoyed sales for her debut full-length recording, Music of the Sun (2005), on which conventional R&B ballads shared space with Caribbean-flavored dance-pop that showcased her melodious Barbadian lilt. About the same time, she started a girl group with two friends, and in 2004 she attracted the attention of Evan Rogers, an American record producer. In September 2008, Rihanna joined fifteen other female artists to record and perform the song « Just Stand Up! » during the Stand Up to Cancer television special. That year, she released a photo book documenting the Last Girl on Earth tour, serving as a companion to her album Rated R (2009). Rihanna has eight number-one singles on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, seven on the Airplay chart, and sixteen on the Rhythmic chart. Jocelyn Vena of MTV News observed that Rihanna often creates music videos that are thought-provoking and aligned with the themes of her songs.
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.

Life and career

Adopting a more mature image, Rihanna rose to stardom and transitioned to dance-pop and betista casino R&B with the album Good Girl Gone Bad (2007) and its reissue, subtitled Reloaded (2008). Known for her artistic reinventions, she is an influential figure in both music and fashion. She’s closing a chapter of her life — saying goodbye to the heartbreaks, pleading and scrutiny — and embracing a new, well, era that was quietly created during the behind-the-scenes of The Eras Tour. At its heart, The Life of a Showgirl goes beyond the fame, accolades, praise, and anything else Swift has been awarded in her 20-year career. Swift herself has long embodied independence through redefining over and over what it means to be a pop star for over two decades.
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.

Who is Rihanna?

And Eminem that appeared on albums of theirs; many felt her vocals on the latter’s “Love the Way You Lie” (2010) lent resonance to the song’s depiction of an abusive relationship. With the assistance of such high-profile collaborators as Timbaland and Justin Timberlake, she abandoned the tropical rhythms that had adorned her first two albums and recorded a collection of sleek R&B that presented her as a fiercely independent and rebellious woman. He helped Fenty record a demo that led to an audition with the rapper Jay-Z, who at the time headed the Def Jam record label, and he soon signed the budding vocalist. Rihanna exclusively uses her surname for ventures outside of music to keep her business and artistic identities separate. In November 2015, Rihanna partnered with Benoit Demouy to launch Fr8me, a Los Angeles-based beauty and stylist agency supporting artists with commercial bookings, photo shoots, campaigns, and red-carpet appearances. In March 2015, Rihanna was announced as a co-owner of the music streaming platform Tidal, alongside several other artists.
She especially enjoyed singing and won a high-school talent show with a rendition of a Mariah Carey song. As a child, she listened to Caribbean music, such as reggae, as well as American hip-hop and R&B. Rihanna (born February 20, 1988, St. Michael parish, Barbados) is a Barbadian pop and rhythm-and-blues (R&B) singer who became a worldwide star in the early 21st century. 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. In October 2019, she stated that she declined to perform at the 2020 Super Bowl halftime show in support of Colin Kaepernick following the controversy surrounding his role in the national anthem protests. Proceeds from the single supported the fundraiser, which ultimately helped raise $100 million for cancer research.
Her work has influenced artists such as Lorde, Sam Smith, Billie Eilish, Selena Gomez, Ed Sheeran, Ellie Goulding, Kim Petras, Marilyn Manson, Jessie J, SZA, Ayra Starr, and Demi Lovato. In July 2015, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) announced that Rihanna had surpassed 100 million gold and platinum song certifications. In 2012, she set a Guinness World Record as the best-selling digital artist in the US.

Speak Now: Proving Her Songwriting Prowess

She first gained prominence in 2005 with her debut album « Music of the Sun, » which quickly established her as a force in the music industry. Known for her unique style and chart-topping hits, she has influenced music and fashion worldwide. She told Winfrey that Brown may have been the love of her life and she has developed “a very close friendship” with him. The pair worked together on the song “Birthday Cake,” released that year.