Photo: Mockford/FilmMagic
With Rihanna’s new album Rated R out on Monday, November 23rd, the “Russian Roulette” singer discussed when she knew she was ready to record the LP after being assaulted by then-boyfriend Chris Brown on On-Air with Ryan Seacrest. “Right after the Grammys this year, I would say months later, I kind of got tired of just hanging out in the house and I got cabin fever, so I was like ‘I have to work.’ I called the label and said ‘I’m ready,’ ” Rihanna told Seacrest.

Rihanna’s fierce fashions: check out photos of the star onstage and off.

Lyrically, Rihanna at first tried not to broach the subject of love in her new music, but she found it hard to avoid. “We went into the studio and first thing we did was figure out the sound. I was having mixed emotions about what I wanted to talk about. I did not want to talk about love at all, because it was sort of expected and I didn’t really believe in love at that point, so I tried to go the other way,” Rihanna said. “But when I went into the studio, it was my peace and my way to vent, so all these real emotions started to come out, so it’s really raw. The album is a roller coaster of emotions. It’s a really personal album and I wouldn’t have made it any other way.” (more…)

Rihanna returned to the stage in London last night with a little help from her friends. Performing her first concert since her February 8th altercation with Chris Brown, the singer performed a 45-minute set featuring hits and new songs off her upcoming Rated R, as well as two special guest appearances by Jay-Z and Young Jeezy. Rihanna, wearing a now-trademark eye mask and leotard ensemble, kicked off the show with Rated R’s first two singles “Wait Your Turn” (watch it above) and “Russian Roulette” before launching into her past chart-toppers like “Disturbia,” “Take a Bow” and “Don’t Stop the Music,” the BBC reports.

Rihanna’s fierce fashions: check out photos of the star onstage and off.

Rihanna performed at London’s Brixton Academy for the launch of the Nokia X6, and the performance was streamed live globally. Midway through the set, Young Jeezy emerged to perform his Rated R collaboration “Hard,” but the real surprise came in the encore, when Jay-Z appeared to perform both “Run This Town” and “Umbrella.” As Rolling Stone noted yesterday, both Jay-Z and Kanye West were on hand for Beyoncé’s London concert the night before, West didn’t make it out for “Run This Town” at Brixton. (more…)

Just hours after Chris Brown released his “Crawl” video, which seemingly takes a remorseful look back at his relationship with Rihanna, the Rated R singer unveiled her own video for her new album’s first single, “Russian Roulette” — a song that also seems inspired by an ill-fated romance. The video, directed by Anthony Mandler, will make its official debut tonight on 20/20.

Rihanna and Chris Brown’s Grammy Weekend: Photos of the days and hours before the infamous fight.

There’s plenty of imagery here that appears to be influenced by Rihanna’s February 8th altercation with Brown: bullets fly through water, blood runs down Rihanna’s chest and, at the 1:43 mark, a speeding car approaches Rihanna while she stands alone at night — a moment that seems to mirror the events immediately following the assault. Much of the video features Rihanna in a padded cell surrounded by armed guards scrutinizing her every move. It’s difficult not to draw a connection between those scenes and the avalanche of unwanted media coverage that has followed the singer in the past months, causing her to tell Glamour magazine, “I went to sleep as Rihanna and woke up as Britney Spears.” (more…)

Rihanna’s first televised interview since her February 8th altercation with Chris Brown finally aired on Friday during the November 6th episode of 20/20. While excerpts of Rihanna’s conversation with Diane Sawyer appeared on Good Morning America earlier last week, the full 20/20 interview provided more details of the assault and its aftermath, including why Rihanna returned to Brown only three weeks after the incident and Rihanna’s reaction to the shocking leaked photograph of her battered face.

“I get very embarrassed, I feel humiliated. I get angry, all over again. Every time I see it, the whole thing plays back in my head,” Rihanna said of the leaked photograph that appeared on TMZ in the days following the assault. “It’s humiliating to see your face like that.” Rihanna also lashed out at those who said she must have provoked Brown in some way prior to the assault. “It’s ignorance,” Rihanna said, adding that at no point did she hit Brown. “Because even if I hit him first, that makes it okay for him to do that to me?”

Rihanna and Chris Brown’s Grammy Weekend: Photos of the days and hours before the infamous fight. (more…)

A second excerpt of Rihanna’s 20/20 interview with Diane Sawyer aired this morning on Good Morning America, in which Rihanna finally reveals for the first time what happened inside of Chris Brown’s rented Lamborghini the night of February 8th. Prior to this interview, both stars have let their lawyers and police evidence do the talking; Brown has previously sidestepped the question, saying he wanted to respect Rihanna’s privacy.

Click to see GMA’s first interview with Rihanna.

Rihanna confirmed that the couple’s argument was sparked by a text message another woman sent to Brown. “I caught him in a lie and he wouldn’t tell the truth. I wouldn’t drop it. I couldn’t take that he kept lying to me and he couldn’t take that I wouldn’t drop it,” Rihanna said. “So it escalated into him being violent towards me and… it was ugly.” (more…)

Photo: Astute/ABC

Rihanna broke her silence and described how her relationship with Chris Brown turned violent in the first of two interviews with ABC News today on Good Morning America. “This happened to me and it could happen to anybody,” Rihanna told Diane Sawyer. “There’s a lot of women who experienced what I did, but not in the public. I just thought, ‘There goes my little bit of privacy.’ ” (Watch a clip of the GMA interview, after the jump.)

Rihanna and Chris Brown’s Grammy Weekend: Photos of the days and hours before the infamous fight.

According to Sawyer, Rihanna will describe precisely what happened on February 8th in Brown’s rented Lamborghini in the second part of the interview, which airs Friday night on 20/20. In tomorrow’s segment, Rihanna tells Sawyer, “That’s all I kept thinking about the whole time. When’s it going to stop, when’s it going to stop?” when asked about the assault.

This morning, Rihanna did discuss why she was “ashamed” by the incident, and why she remained silent in the weeks following Brown’s arrest. (more…)

“Wait Your Turn,” the first video from Rihanna’s November 23rd album Rated R, has been posted on the singer’s Website, 10 days before her clip for first single “Russian Roulette” is due to premiere on ABC’s 20/20. Anthony Mandler directed both clips, as well as Jay-Z’s dark video for “Run This Town,” which is stylistically similar to the “Wait Your Turn” spot. Mandler previously helmed five videos off Rihanna’s Good Girl Gone Bad. Per Just Jared, “Wait Your Turn” was shot in New York City’s Washington Heights neighborhood on October 16th.

Rihanna’s fierce fashions: check out photos of the star onstage and off.

Though this is Rihanna’s first music video since “Rehab” — and first featuring her own music since prior to her February 8th altercation with Chris Brown — fans hoping to glean a bit about the singer’s state of mind from the clip will be disappointed. Rihanna gazes at the camera — sometimes in sunglasses, sometimes wearing a patch over her right eye — while her movements are captured in a grainy black-and-white reminiscent of surveillance camera footage. There’s no plot to speak of, just Rihanna singing to the chorus, “The wait is ova, the wait is ova,” while traipsing around a desolate park, a rooftop overlooking Manhattan and a bridge. Sometimes she stands in front of a statue of an angel so it appears its wings are sprouting from her own back. (more…)

Just hours after Rihanna’s second Rated R single “Wait Your Turn” leaked and her reps confirmed the LP’s track list and guests, a third Rated R song found its way onto the Internet: “Hard,” featuring Young Jeezy. Written by The-Dream, “Hard” appears to be the song producer “Tricky” Stewart previously called an edgy “club banger,” Rolling Stone reported. The pair were also the brains behind Rihanna’s smash “Umbrella,” a song that’s more like “Hard” than the reflective “Russian Roulette” and “Wait Your Turn.” “No fear … I’m so hard,” Rihanna sings over a swirl of synthesizers and a pounding piano. “Brilliant, resilient. … I see you aiming at my pedestal so I think I better let you know that I’m so hard.” Hear “Hard” after the jump.

Check out Rihanna’s most fierce looks.

Rihanna is slated to appear in a pair of ABC News interviews, and Glamour has named her Woman of the Year in their next issue. In the magazine interview, Rihanna explains how her February altercation with then-boyfriend Chris Brown turned her life upside down: “I felt like I went to sleep as Rihanna and woke up as Britney Spears. That was the level of media chaos that happened the next day.” (more…)

Rihanna has revealed the full track list for her upcoming album Rated R, out November 23rd. Will.i.am and Young Jeezy guest on the LP, along with Slash, who contributes guitar to the appropriately titled “ROCKSTAR 101.” Fans who preorder Rated R — starting midnight November 3rd, at the iTunes store — will receive an instant download of the Ne-Yo-penned first single “Russian Roulette.” The single will also go on sale tomorrow, and the singer’s RihannaNow website will debut her video for “Wait Your Turn,” the leaked track that Rolling Stone reported on this morning.

Check out Rihanna’s most fierce looks.

The iTunes version of Rated R will also include director Anthony Mandler’s exclusive cut of the two videos he directed, “Wait Your Turn” and “Russian Roulette.” The “Russian Roulette” video will make its official debut on November 13th on 20/20, a week after Rihanna first appears on 20/20 to tell her story for the first time since her February 8th altercation with Chris Brown. Rihanna is also scheduled to make appearances on the November 5th Good Morning America and on the November 9th episode of The Alexa Chung Show. (more…)

The wait is officially ova: Rihanna’s “Russian Roulette,” the first single off her upcoming album Rated R, debuted this morning at approximately 11:23 a.m. EST at the official RihannaNow Website. “Roulette” opens up with a desperado guitar lick that hints at an impending shootout before the throbbing and foreboding bassline that carries the track settles in. The dark ballad, which Ne-Yo wrote and produced, seems to find Rihanna singing about enduring a tumultuous relationship and keeping faith in a dangerous boyfriend. “You can see my heart beating, you can see it through my chest/I’m terrified, but I’m not leaving/Know that I must pass this test,” Rihanna sings on the chorus, “So just pull the trigger.” The song ends with an ominous gunshot. The song’s title and lyrics echo the singer’s recent interest in guns; in March she had a tiny gun tattooed on her side.

Rihanna’s fierce fashions: get a look at her most famous looks, onstage and off.

Rated R, the follow-up to 2007’s multiplatinum Good Girl Gone Bad, arrives physically and digitally on November 23rd, the same week as Lady Gaga’s The Fame Monster, Adam Lambert’s For Your Entertainment and Britney Spears’ The Singles Collection hit stores.

Ne-Yo’s partnership with Rihanna has been fruitful in the past, generating hits like “Unfaithful,” “Take A Bow” and “Hate That I Love You.” Rhianna also recruited producers The-Dream & “Tricky” Stewart, Chase & Status, Stargate and Justin Timberlake for Rated R. (more…)

Photo: Moraes Barros/WireImage

Rihanna’s first single from her upcoming fourth album (due November 23rd), will be unveiled October 20th at 11:23 a.m. EST. Due to the level of secrecy surrounding the star’s new LP — it’ll be her first work under her own name since she was assaulted by ex-boyfriend Chris Brown in February — producer Chris “Tricky” Stewart tells Rap-Up he’s unsure whether the track he worked on will be the first or second single and can’t release its name — but either way, he guarantees the song will be a smash. “It’s uptempo. It’s a club banger and it’s edgy,” Stewart said.

Check out photos of Rihanna onstage and off.

The song was written by The-Dream and produced by Stewart, the same pair responsible for Rihanna’s Good Girl Gone Bad smash “Umbrella,” but Stewart says the new single is “different.” “It’s a superstar taking a step in a totally different direction. This album is different than her past works,” Stewart said. (more…)