Rihanna (12 page)

RiRi confessed to
Us Magazine
back then that she usually had two meals a day. She would start her day with boiled egg whites, bacon and toast and have fish and rice for her lunch or dinner. She’d eat a granola bar, too. She told the magazine: ‘I never acquired a taste for vegetables, because I didn’t grow up eating them.’ Rihanna eats more than two meals a day now because she has to. She burns so much energy that she would collapse if she didn’t graze at times.

Touring keeps Rihanna fit, because she has to be able to perform for two hours without getting out of breath. She
needs the stamina to be able to do this every night for weeks on end. Being friends with her dancers must help, too because she can follow their direction when it comes to the food she needs to eat to keep her body working properly. When she’s touring, Rihanna has to keep her body in tip-top condition, which means she has to follow a diet of healthy eating. This is really hard for her, because she likes her food. She admitted to
More!
magazine: ‘I’ve been working out a lot and I eat pretty boring – boiled egg, fruit, tons of water and some chicken. Well, this week I’ve eaten some other things but really small portions. I hate vegetables. I hate anything healthy, but if you want the results you’ve got to do it. I haven’t even been drinking alcohol with dinner since I’ve been with this diet.’

Even when she’s not touring, Rihanna is constantly running around from interview to interview, or to and from the recording studio. She has to eat on the move a lot, and sometimes just has to eat what she’s given. Rihanna loves Spicy Nacho flavour Doritos (and spicy food in general), and makes sure she takes chilli with her when she goes out for food. She likes adding red pepper to meals to spice them up, and revealed in one interview that her make-up artist and friend Mylah Morales is fond of adding chilli, too.

RiRi’s favourite restaurant has to be Giorgio Baldi in Los Angeles. It is open every day apart from Mondays, and she sometimes eats there five times in a week if she’s at home. She loves their food so much that she would rather eat at ‘Il Ristorante di Giorgio Baldi’ than cook for herself
or go to another restaurant. The paparazzi know how much she loves the place, and so they generally know where to find her when she’s home; but they are not allowed to hassle her while she is eating: they just wait outside, ready for her to leave.

Rihanna loves Italian food very much, and her favourite meal has to be spaghetti. She has been trying to learn how to speak Italian for a while, but it isn’t going very well – she’s been too busy to study the Rosetta Stone language program that she got for a Christmas present. She knows how to swear in Italian, but that’s about it!

Rihanna is constantly being told she is one of the sexiest women on the planet, but she still struggles to accept it. She told BBC Radio 1: ‘I feel so flattered and never get used to it. Anytime I hear it, I feel it’s a compliment. I had to learn to just go for it when it comes to being sexy, as I used to be self-conscious. Now I’m pretty solid and happy with my body, and what I’m uncomfortable with my body I accept it for what it is. At times I get bloated, a little bigger from time to time and a couple more dimples on the backs of my legs. You just have to learn to be happy with what you have.’

Playboy
magazine has tried to convince her to strip off to grace its front cover a few times. So far she has turned them down, although she may do a nude photo shoot in the future, if and when she wants to. She would want to do this in a stylish and classy way, and would never do it for money.

In May 2009, Rihanna was devastated when nude photos she had taken for an ex-boyfriend ended up on the
Internet. It was only a short time after the photo of her beaten-up face had been leaked, and so it made RiRi feel even worse.

She confessed to the hosts of the New York City radio station Hot 97: ‘It was the worst thing that could possibly ever happen to me. I just felt like my whole privacy was taken before that [the first leaked photo] and then, when that came out, I thought, “Oh great, so now there’s nothing they don’t know about me and my private life.” It was humiliating and it was embarrassing – especially my mom having to see that.’

RiRi decided that she had to tell her mum before someone else did, and so she sent her some flowers before letting her know what had happened. The timing was terrible, as it was two days before Mother’s Day. However, Monica loves RiRi no matter what, and once it was all out in the open, she helped her daughter cope.

Some women can be very cruel, and enjoy saying nasty things about Rihanna because they are jealous of the fact that men find RiRi so attractive. They say she dresses inappropriately, and is setting a bad example for young girls.

Rihanna knows what these people are saying, but doesn’t let it bother her. She told
GQ
: ‘People think I’m overly sexy. It bothers them for some reason. Girls don’t like to see other girls dressed sexy. It’s a little intimidating – I don’t mean that in a cocky way.

‘There’s always going to be somebody not liking what you do. People have a lot of crazy opinions on things.
Things I say, things I wear, places I go. It’s just stupid. It’s bulls**t. I’m a 22-year-old human being. It’s fine for me to go to a club.

‘People are hypocrites. They can’t wait to say something horrible. Most of them are unhappy with themselves. It’s women who are mad at other women. They should take a look at their own lives. A lot of people don’t have the guts to confront themselves – they don’t have the balls.’

Rihanna is going to continue to dress sexily, because it gives her confidence and makes her feel good. If she was wearing something unfeminine then it would have a negative impact on her performance, and fans would notice immediately. Fashion is one of her passions, so she is always going to want to wear the latest items from the catwalk. RiRi knows that her beauty won’t last forever, so she’s appreciating how her body looks now. However, she can see both sides of the argument and admitted: ‘Public figures can become annoying. They see me a lot, and every time they see me, my ass is out or my boobs are out so it can get a little irritating, I get that. But I have to do what makes me happy, what I feel like doing.’

May 2010 saw Matt Kemp admit that he was dating Rihanna. She had been to watch him play for the Los Angeles Dodgers a few times and to support him, which was only fair because he had done the same for her. A few weeks earlier, she had spoken publicly about their relationship, and now it was his turn.

Matt was at a charity bowling event in Los Angeles when he was interviewed by
Us
magazine. He told them:
‘Yeah! That’s my girl! She’s just a fun person. I love to be around her.’

Rihanna was not at the event because she was busy touring, so Matt was looking forward to seeing her when she next had some time off. He said: ‘She’s definitely not gonna be here for a little while. She’s definitely a great person in my life, and I’m happy I’m with her.’

At the end of May, Rihanna released ‘Rockstar 101’, the fourth single from
Rated R.
The track includes a guitar solo by Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash and was written by The-Dream and Tricky Stewart. It came out on 25 May.

The video was directed by Melina Matsoukas, and Travis Barker from Blink-182 played the drummer in Rihanna’s rock band. He actually taught Rihanna how to play and told MTV: ‘She’s awesome! I haven’t seen anyone catch on that quick in quite a while and have that kind of ear for drums or rhythm, so I was stoked that she could really play the drums.’ As well as wearing some very sexy outfits in the video, Rihanna put on a Slash-style outfit and played around with a guitar before smashing it to pieces. In one scene she wears a crown and is covered in black body paint, with chains wrapped around her, and in another, she wanders through a forest in the snow.

When people heard ‘Rockstar 101’ for the first time, they were impressed that the former Guns N’ Roses guitarist had collaborated with Rihanna on the track. She had approached Slash after a Black Eyed Peas charity concert to ask if he was interested in working with her. Rihanna was so busy that they didn’t meet in a studio to
work on the track together, and instead recorded their sections separately.

She had originally planned that Slash himself would be in the video, but he pulled out because he had been putting in the hours preparing for his own track to come out, and he believed that ‘Rockstar 101’ would be a hit with or without him in the video. He felt that the finished video was great, and told Rihanna he rated it in a text. As he revealed to MTV: ‘All things considered, it brings an element of sexuality to it that I probably wouldn’t have been capable of. I think it’s hot, and I sent her a text this morning telling her it was definitely hotter with her doing it than with me doing it. Everything works out the way it’s supposed to.

‘I’m way more flattered that she played me in the video than her asking me to be in it,’ he said. ‘All things considered, she’s pretty cool.’

An album containing 12 remixes of the song was released on May 25, each having been remixed by a different artist.

In June 2010, Rihanna released ‘Te Amo’ from the
Rated R
album for her international fans. Written by Rihanna, Stargate and James Fauntleroy II, when translated from the Spanish/Portuguese the title means ‘I love you’. It is a song about desire, and Rihanna is being pursued by a female admirer. It was No. 1 in Bulgaria and charted in the UK at No. 14, No. 9 in Switzerland, No. 11 in German and No. 14 in Finland.

Digital Spy gave the track four out of five stars, saying in
its review: ‘One of her
Rated R
LP’s less menacing moments, “Te Amo” finds La Fenty grappling with her sexuality over some irresistible, Latin-infused Stargate beats. However, after realising
precisely
what her same sex suitor means when she says “te amo”, she has no choice but to let her down gently: “I feel love but I don’t feel that way.” Oh Ri, you’re officially the world’s biggest heartbreaker.’

Rihanna filmed the video in late April in the Château de Vigny in France. The actress who played her lover was a French model called Laetitia Casta, and it was directed by Anthony Mandler. While she was in France to film the video, Rihanna told the
Daily Mirror
how much she was missing Matt. She said: ‘I’m really happy right now. Paris is an amazing city. I love it. It would have been so cool if he was here.

‘I was hoping he would be able to come to London but he’s working. And I’m touring and shooting videos for my next single so it’s going to be seven weeks before I see him again.

‘It’ll probably be when I get back to America that we can hook up properly. We have to make do with Skype and phone, but I miss him. And this is the most romantic town. I can’t wait to see him again.’

She also spoke to
Elle
magazine about how much Matt had changed her life and helped her through her troubles. She told them: ‘I have a boyfriend. I’m so happy. I feel really comfortable, and it’s so easy. I have such a chaotic life, but at the end of the day, that is just my peace. It keeps me sane, really, talking to him and talking to my family.’

Rihanna is a person who loves music, and when she’s travelling she will listen to her favourite tracks. Some of the tracks she loves are written and sung by some of her closest friends, so she finds extra meaning behind them. RiRi believes that music is in her DNA. She does have some of her own records in her playlist, but she also enjoys tracks by Miley Cyrus, John Mayer and Kings of Leon. Rihanna first heard Amy Winehouse’s music when she was in London and she was impressed by it. She was also surprised that it took another year for it to be played in the US. In the past, she has admitted that she likes the wide variety of music that is played in the UK, because she finds it much more diverse than in the US.

When she was interviewed by iTunes, she revealed what her playlist at the time looked like:

‘Best I Ever Had’ by Drake

‘Closer’ by Kings of Leon

‘Young Forever’ by Jay-Z featuring Mr Hudson

‘Venus vs. Mars’ by Jay-Z

‘Meet Me Halfway’ by Black Eyed Peas

‘La La La’ by LMFAO

‘Throw it in the Bag’ (Remix) by Fabolous featuring

Drake and The-Dream

‘Party in the U.S.A’ by Miley Cyrus

‘Thinking of You’ by Katy Perry

‘Umbrella’ by Rihanna featuring Jay-Z

‘Russian Roulette’ by Rihanna

‘Sweet Dreams’ by Beyoncé

‘Waiting on the World to Change’ by John Mayer

Other artists that Rihanna likes include Bob Marley, Paramore and Trey Songz.

She also talked about the first time she went to a big concert. Back in 2004, she went to the Ladies First Tour, and was thrilled to have the opportunity to see Beyoncé, Missy Elliot and Alicia Keys on the same night (the three singers had joined together because they hadn’t wanted to do solo tours on their own). Beyoncé had been used to performing with the other members of Destiny’s Child, so she liked having the support of Missy Elliot and Alicia Keys.

Rihanna told iTunes: ‘I was in like, a nosebleed seat but I was in tears. I could not believe that Beyoncé was right there, and Alicia Keys and Missy Elliott.

‘I was a little starstruck. No, I was very starstruck, but it was so much fun. It was very inspiring and it motivated me so much.’

These performers now consider RiRi their equal, and in Beyoncé’s case, the two are now friends. It is crazy how things can change in just a few years.

If RiRi had to choose one song as the soundtrack to her life she says it would have to be a medley of Bob Marley’s ‘Waiting In Vain’, ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’ by Cyndi Lauper, and ‘F*** You’ by Cee-Lo Green.

One of her big musical ambitions is to play at the Glastonbury music festival. She has wanted to perform there ever since Jay-Z headlined, back in June 2008. He helped introduce more R&B to the Glastonbury mix, and RiRi would love to follow in his footsteps.

She confided in
Q Magazine
: ‘I’d love to play
Glastonbury. I have heard so many things about what happens there. I love rock music. I love Kings of Leon and The Prodigy. You could have nightmares about that guy with the clown face and the weird hair [Keith Flint]. That’s a look to scare little kids, right?