Rihanna

Half-Guyanese and half-Barbadian, Rihanna (born Robyn Rihanna Fenty on February 20th, 1988) began singing in primary school in her hometown of Saint Michael, Barbados, and in 2004, at age 16, had won a local beauty contest. A year prior, she'd sung for New York record producer Evan Rogers, who was vacationing on the island; Rogers was impressed enough to record demos for her in the U.S. She was signed soon after by Def Jam's acting president, Jay-Z, and released Music of the Sun (Number 10, 2005), whose success was propelled by the dancehall-fueled "Pon de Replay" (Number Two, 2005) and, to a lesser degree, "If It's Lovin' That You Want" (Number 36, 2005).

Most mainstream pop and R&B acts spread out their album releases to maximize their singles' chart value, but Rihanna bounded back a mere eight months after Music of the Sun with A Girl Like Me (Number Five, 2006), a noticeable artistic step up and a bigger hit than the debut. It featured her first Number One single, "SOS," which turned on a buffed-and-shined-up chunk of Soft Cell's new-wave dance classic "Tainted Love." The Ne-Yo-penned "Unfaithful" (Number Six, 2006) and the Sean Paul duet "Break It Off" (Number Nine, 2006) continued Rihanna's hot streak. Still, those hits were just a warm-up, both commercially and in terms of musical quality, for Good Girl Gone Bad (Number Two, 2007) and its smash lead single "Umbrella," featuring some opening remarks by Jay-Z. The song — which was nominated for three Grammys including Record and Song of the Year and won for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration — dominated the summer of 2007, settling at Number One for seven weeks in the U.S. and for 10 weeks in the U.K., besting Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" from the prior year, which had been a U.K. Number One for nine weeks.

The hits kept coming with "Shut Up and Drive" (Number 15, 2007) and "Hate That I Love You," featuring Ne-Yo (Number Nine, 2007). "Don't Stop the Music," which like "SOS" married a fearsome digital 4/4 stomp to an old favorite (in this case, Michael Jackson's "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'"), had been a club favorite in 2007 (it was Number One on the Hot Dance Club Play chart) before being plugged to pop radio (it reached Number Two on the pop chart).