The 34-year-old artist, who left the music business in 2016, is making a comeback tonight with the prestigious Super Bowl halftime concert. To the delight of fans who have never stopped waiting for it.
The pop world holds its breath. After seven years of almost total musical inactivity, Rihanna is finally preparing to reconnect with the stage. The 34-year-old singer will perform the Super Bowl halftime concert this Sunday evening, the most watched annual sporting event in the United States. An honor reserved for the cream of North American pop music, of which the Barbadian is still a part, despite her long desertion from the studios.
On Spotify, Rihanna is the fourth most listened to female artist in the world, far ahead of Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish or even Beyoncé. His fans are constantly asking him for a new album on social networks, between amusement and weariness in the face of this long wait. The announcement of his concert during the football match this Sunday, last September, had the effect of a bombshell with the public and the media. An unalterable success that would almost make you forget that her last album dates from 2016 and that she has produced almost nothing since, preferring to devote herself to her make-up and ready-to-wear brands.
At a time when artists are more numerous, and their pace of production more frenetic than ever, time seems to have no hold on the imprint left by Rihanna. The result of a decade of ubiquity in the spotlight, marked by unparalleled flair, musical flawlessness, some drama and a spontaneity she never sacrificed on the altar of success.
The one we didn’t see coming
When she burst onto the pop scene at just 17 with her first single, Pon de Replay, nothing allows to predict a long career to Rihanna. Rhythm dancing a bit aggressive, low-waisted jeans, visible navel and seductive looks, the young girl spotted by Jay-Z looks like all the singers who jostle at the time and failed to impose themselves over time. , ofAmerie To Kat Deluna Passing by Cassie:
“At first, she was just a pop-R&B singer,” Khal Ali, a pop news watcher on BFMTV.com, recalls. a self-titled YouTube channel followed by 87,000 people. “It was mostly Jay-Z trying to create a new Beyoncé.”
The recipe works, however: Rihanna’s first steps demonstrate her ease in chaining hits (S.O.S., Unfaithful…). But it was in 2007 that the young woman demonstrated, for the first time, an essential quality for anyone wishing to continue in the charts: an ability to constantly reinvent oneself.
Adaptability to any test
New look for a new Riri: with the album Good Girl Gone Badcarried by the world tube Umbrella, the singer assumes more sophisticated outfits, a more elaborate aesthetic, and takes the public to her new era. This is only the first of its many transformations. Wise girl, femme fatale, extravagant, ultra-sexual… one after the other, Rihanna wears all the costumes without ever getting the wrong size.
Her explorations are also musical: “She is clearly a versatile artist”, analyzes Khal Ali. “Her catalog is super rich: R&B, pop, trap, hip-hop, rock, reggae, she has touched a lot of things.”
“That’s why after seven years of absence, she is expected at the turn,” he continues. This is undoubtedly also one of the reasons why the world has never tired of listening to his songs again.
When this hit machine retired in 2016 to focus on ultra-lucrative businesses – its clothing and cosmetics brands made her a billionairea status that none of her fellow singers has achieved – she leaves behind an abyssal void.
The hyperactive recording studios
Especially since at the time of her musical prowess, Rihanna never gave her audience time to find another idol. Between 2005 and 2012, the singer kept to the frenetic pace of one album per year (with the exception of 2008), almost all supported by a world tour. Extremely rare in show business, this express-discography does not leave the memory of any commercial failure. Each disc brings its share of memorable hits (Disturbia, Rude Boy, Only Girl, We Found Love, Diamonds…). Not to mention his film appearances in Valerian, Ocean’s 8.
This succession of hits is also evidence of an ability to surround yourself well. Stargate, Timbaland, Calvin Harris… the fashionable producers follow one another over the years. Better, it is sometimes a decade ahead. From 2016, she sang in duet with SZA: then an illustrious unknown, this same SZA has just started the year 2023 at the top of the American ranking with her second album.
Flair, adaptability, ability to surround herself well and to surprise the public without confusing them… And if, finally, she was Madonna’s true heiress. “Rihanna represents a non-conformity reminiscent of that of Madonna in her time,” says Jennifer Padjemi in her essay Feminisms & pop culture (Stock, 2021). “Free of her movements, free of her words (…) we cannot put her in any box.”
The good friend of show business
At the same time, the Rihanna character is taking shape and only getting stronger over the years. Despite her constant reinventions, she remains true to her Caribbean roots, which are underrepresented on the American music scene. The colors of the Rastafarian flag populate its clips, from Rude Boy To Work Passing by Man Down.
Rihanna has “made the whole world dream with her quest for excellence, her creativity, her discipline and above all her extraordinary commitment to her homeland”, moreover greeted the Prime Minister of Barbados by awarding her the title of national hero of the country in November 2021.
Another red thread will never be broken, more media than musical: that of spontaneity. This is also where one of the main attractions of the singer lies, according to journalist Sarah Dahan:
“There is a very strong human factor in Rihanna”, estimates with BFMTV.com the author of ‘Divas: the greatest icons of pop’ (Huginn & Muninn, 2021).
“You can’t help comparing her to Beyoncé, who is nevertheless quite a robotic person, she doesn’t let her emotions show. With Rihanna, you can identify. She’s the best friend, the one with who we laugh at.”
Rather than a twin to Beyoncé, Rihanna would be her funny and untenable little sister. In the early 2010s, when social networks were still in their infancy, she treated her fans to grotesque tweets, going so far as to argue publicly with other singers. When Ciara, then in full loss of professional momentum, threatens to attack her if she crosses her on stage, Rihanna replies tac-au-tac: “Good luck to you to book this scene you are talking about!” .
A spontaneity which she also demonstrates with her fans. When she meets them on the sidelines of a concert, she offers them memorable photos, both funny and sexy, which inevitably go around the web.
Rihanna embodies the superstar who doesn’t take herself seriously, who laughs at others and at herself on the sofas of the most prominent talk shows, who gladly rolls a joint when the cameras – unlike the paparazzi – are not no longer there, who talks about sex like we talk about clothes…
“A powerful and human woman”
Sex, precisely, is an integral part of his media personality. As much in his hits (“come over here, rude boywill you be big enough?”, she sang in one of her most emblematic titles) than in her outfits … or the absence of them; in 2014, the French magazine Him features her topless, probably unheard of for a popstar since Madonna.
“I hope that the young women who listen to her do so carefully, because she speaks to them of an attractive, funny, playful sexuality”, deciphers Sarah Dahan. “It’s never dirty, vulgar or demeaning. It conveys an uninhibited and welcome image of a woman who is both powerful and human.”
This humanity was particularly highlighted by a dramatic episode that pursued her for years. One evening in 2009, Rihanna was the victim of a beating from her boyfriend at the time, singer Chris Brown. The swollen face of the 20-year-old young woman quickly spreads out in one of all the people newspapers and brings to light a sadly commonplace case of domestic violence. The public, already conquered by his music, his humor and his outspokenness, is seized with a feeling less naturally nurtured towards the superstars: compassion.
An “identification phenomenon”
As often in this kind of business, the violence does not put an end to the idyll: the lovers find themselves and get lost again in a soap opera which fascinates the tabloids and worries the fans. When Drake becomes embroiled in what then becomes a love triangle, two teams of supporters form behind the two rival singers, further heightening the public’s fascination with Rihanna’s private life. But Chris Brown remains her ghost and, in 2012, it was a singer in tears who evoked her ambivalent feelings for the artist on Oprah Winfrey’s sofa. And in spite of herself puts words on the pangs experienced in silence by millions of women.
“She is imperfect, she has cracks, she has lived”, summarizes Sarah Dahan. “There’s an identification phenomenon around Rihanna. When she welcomed her first child last May with rapper A$AP Rocky, fans were genuinely happy for her.”
This pregnancy was also an opportunity to show the intact influence of the singer. Over the months, she displayed her ever plumper belly without denying any of her taste for sexy outfits. Clothing choices that are anything but trivial, as the specialized press has pointed out; from bare backs in crop tops, Rihanna was wringing her neck at the idea that a woman has to give up her femininity when she becomes a mother. “Is Rihanna changing pregnancy looks forever?” vogue.
Far from the recording studios, Rihanna has found a way to cultivate her influence by always being in tune with the times. When she launched her makeup line in 2017, Fenty Beauty, it was by offering 40 shades of foundation, for all skin types, from the darkest to the lightest. To wear the clothes of her brand, Savage x Fenty, she calls on models of all sizes: “She started talking about inclusion even before it became more democratic”, underlines Sarah Dahan. “Here again, she was a visionary.”
Not to mention the foundation she created in 2012 to work for education in developing countries, which earned her to be received at the Elysée Palace by Emmanuel Macron…
“Beneath her nonchalant looks, she knows exactly what she wants and she does it,” concludes the specialist. “Whether it’s making seven albums in seven years, taking time off to rest or focusing on her brands. Again, you can see her spontaneity: she seems to work more on the urge than on the planning.”
And his new desire could well be music. Because Rihanna has never announced her musical retirement, and has even waved the carrot of an upcoming record several times, as if to keep her fans in suspense. Some rumors also predict the announcement of a tour. And who says tour says album…
