On February 20th, 1988 Monica and Ronald Fenty couldn’t have
imagined the talent that their newborn baby girl possessed. That she
would, in the 20 years of her life so far, become the most successful
female star of this decade. That the ten week number one spot of her
hit song ‘Umbrella’ would be blamed for the extreme rainfall
seen in the UK during this period! And that soon, she would not be
known as ‘Robyn’, the name they christened her but instead
go by her middle name alone: Rihanna.
Barbadian roots influenced the first of Rihanna’s albums, ‘Music
of the Sun’. This was a 12-track album, released August 2005,
full of reggae rhythm that in accordance to its title carried a Caribbean
sunny vibe. The most popular songs on the album were ‘Pon De
Replay’ and ‘If It’s Lovin’ That You Want’,
charting at places 2 and 11 on the UK Chart respectively. This helped
the album to sell over 2 million copies worldwide and established
Rihanna as an artist on the music scene.
In less than 8 months, Rihanna had released a second album entitled
’A Girl Like Me’. Four singles were promoted from this
album, ‘SOS’, ‘Unfaithful’, ‘We Ride’
and ‘Break It Off’. This album focused on growth as Rihanna
expanded into other genres and songs varied in tone from their previous
cheer to deeper, more emotional and meaningful tunes. Rihanna co-wrote
three of the songs on the album and said that, ‘Now I'm singing
about experiences that I've gone through and stuff that other 18-year-old
girls go through, so it's all about progression’, evidence that
she too feels she has evolved as a person and displayed this through
her music. Sales were even stronger than ‘Music of the Sun’,
with this album even reaching status to be certified platinum in the
USA.
June 4th, 2007 saw the release of what would become a universal phenomenon,
Rihanna’s third album, ‘Good Girl Gone Bad’. The
entire mood of Rihanna as an artist had changed for this album; we
were now listening to an eclectic mix of up-tempo club beats combined
with soulful harmonies giving great variety to her music portfolio.
Eight singles were spawned from the compilation, including the unstoppable
‘Umbrella’, Seven other songs have been successful to
date, ‘Shut Up and Drive’, ‘Hate How Much I Love
You’, ‘Don’t Stop the Music’, ‘Take
a Bow’, ‘If I Never See Your Face Again’, ‘Disturbia’
and finally ‘Rehab’.
Rihanna’s appearance has changed dramatically over the years
and during the ‘Good Girl Gone Bad’ tour, Rihanna had
edgy cropped hair as opposed to the flowing locks of Barbadian purity
that she and her record label were promoting when she began her profession.
Controversially, she wore provocative revealing leather costumes during
shows. This caused a problem when touring in Malaysia due to government
laws there stating that female performers must be covered from shoulders
to knees. Rihanna adhered to this law or else she would have been
fined or even banned from the conservative country.
In my opinion, Rihanna has done well to change her image due to predicting
the current trends. However, there are others who think that she has
come too far from her origins and although successful, she does not
portray today what she strived to at the start of her career. She
is no longer ‘A Girl Like Me’ but ‘A Good Girl Gone
Bad’. Personally, I have been a Rihanna fan since the time of
‘Music of the Sun’ and have enjoyed watching her go from
strength to strength and develop her style to where is today. What
is your opinion? Is Rihanna ’A Good Girl Gone Bad’? And
will you buy her 4th album, currently being produced, that will be
released later this year?
Sources:
http://www.myrihanna.com/profile.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rihanna
http://perezhilton.com/category/rihanna/
