Rihanna (7 page)

I
n the early hours of 8 February 2009, Rihanna’s life changed forever. She had been enjoying herself at a
pre-Grammy
party held by Clive Davis, chief creative officer of Sony Music, and was on her way home with Chris Brown. According to the court documents that were filed months later, they got into an argument in the Hancock Park area of Los Angeles.

Rihanna had spotted a text from another woman on Chris’s phone, and they got into a fight about it. Chris tried to force Rihanna out of the Lamborghini they were travelling in and repeatedly punched her in the face.

Hours later, Chris walked into LAPD’s Wilshire station and turned himself in. Both cancelled their performances at the Grammys that night and their spots were filled by Nicole Kidman’s husband Keith Urban and soul singer Al Green.

Chris would later release a video apologising for what he had done on his website and also apologised many times to Rihanna in private. Speaking on his behalf, his publicist said in a statement: ‘Words cannot begin to express how sorry and saddened I am over what transpired. I am seeking the counselling of my pastor, my mother and other loved ones and I am committed, with God’s help, to emerging a better person.

‘Much of what has been speculated or reported on blogs and/or reported in the media is wrong.’

Her faith helped her through, and many people forget that she didn’t just lose her boyfriend that night: she lost her best friend, too. She headed back to Barbados after the attack, but after three weeks she returned to Chris temporarily, before deciding to finish things with him permanently. During this time her whole family were concerned, with her mother telling
Star
magazine: ‘I’m devastated, but what can I do? Rihanna is her own woman with her own mind and very, very independent. We love her but can’t stand to see her play Russian roulette with her life. Chris has a bizarre power over her. She still loves him and he knows it. In her eyes, he’s a god. Even after all this time, even after what he did, it is not diminished.’

Monica knows better than most what it’s like to be in love and in an abusive relationship with a man who is physically violent. After all, it took great courage on her part to end her own marriage and raise the couple’s three children on her own.

Rihanna’s father also spoke to the press, and revealed to
People
magazine how shocked and surprised he was when he heard the news. He also admitted that she was bruised, but she would get better in time and that he would end the relationship, if he was in her shoes.

Even though a couple of years have passed since that fateful night, Rihanna can’t forget. She wishes now she had had the strength to walk away and not go back then, but she did go back to Chris for a time. She confided in
GQ
: ‘It was a situation I always told myself I would never allow myself to be in. It’s something I would force girlfriends to get out of. But there I was, sitting in it.

‘I witnessed physical abuse happening to my mum and I always said I would never let that happen to me, and then it was happening to me. Now, when I look back at it, it just bugs me out that I couldn’t see it for what it was.’

In the beginning she had wanted to keep what happened private, but once the press got involved, they wouldn’t let it go without finding out every last detail. She would have done anything to stop the attack being leaked to the media, but there was nothing she could do but issue a statement. She told the magazine: ‘Before that, I was just a little girl from the island, singing pop music. It was easy to think I was shallow and I had everything. It seemed like I had no problems in the world. And all of a sudden, boom! Everybody realises I do have problems.

‘I have too much pride. I would rather put on a face. I would never let anyone see me cry. And I’m not like, “Please cry for me, I’ve been in a bad relationship”. I hate that you know that and I don’t want you to remember me for that.’

A few months after the attack the trial took place, and Chris ended up being sentenced to five years’ probation and 180 days’ community labour after pleading guilty to felony assault. While he was being sentenced, the judge told him: ‘I am not immune to the chatter on the airwaves.’ The press speculated that this might have meant that she knew that Rihanna and Chris were still communicating, or that it was a general warning because she watched television and listened to the radio.

Chris was to do his community labour at the
Commonwealth
Catholic Charities in Richmond, Virginia, and he also had to enrol on a 52-week violence counselling course. He was ordered to stay 100 yards away from Rihanna at all times unless they were at the same entertainment-related event, and then he must stay 10 yards away. The restraining order was to last five years.

In November 2009 Rihanna started to talk more openly about what happened to her. She confided in Diane Sawyer on
Good Morning America
: ‘This happened to me, it can happen to anyone.’ In the dark days that followed the attack, Rihanna found great comfort from God as he was there with her all the time, she admitted. She felt incredibly lonely at times, because she was the only person who knew what it had felt like to be in the car that night. Her mum and friends helped as much as they could, but it was hard for her because she still loved Chris despite what he had done to her.

Rihanna revealed that one night she decided to leave her house after a month of hiding indoors. She headed to a
nightclub and danced – and started to feel alive again, after a month of being cut off from people.

Rihanna also talked about how going back to Chris afterwards was a huge mistake, and admitted that she now finds it humiliating to think that she did. She said: ‘I stayed. I even went back after he beat me, which was wrong but again I’m a human being and people put me on a very unrealistic pedestal. And all these expectations, I’m not perfect.’ She also admitted that he had bit her fingers and ear during the attack and had held her in a headlock.

Initially, she felt sorry for Chris after news of the attack broke, because he became so hated overnight – his own fans turned against him and no-one wanted anything to do with him. Rihanna loved him so much that she wanted to protect him, and that is one of the reasons why she went back. When she headed to Miami to be with Chris, she must have thought that things could get back to normal. They stayed at P. Diddy’s home on Star Island, which is an exclusive artificial island with 35 homes (Will Smith, Madonna and Sylvester Stallone all own properties there). It should have been somewhere private, but the paparazzi wouldn’t leave them alone. Chris was photographed on a jet ski with friends, but Rihanna stayed indoors most of the time and so no photos were taken of them together.

Once they decided to make another go of things, Rihanna’s love for Chris soon turned to resentment. Everything about him started to annoy her, even though she pretended things were okay. Chris noticed the change in her and would ask her repeatedly whether she hated
him, but she would always reply with a ‘No’. Eventually she decided that she had to finish things for good: physically, her injuries might have healed, but emotionally, she was still hurting underneath.

When she heard Chris’s YouTube apology, it felt as if he was reading from an autocue, as she explained to ABC News: ‘I know that he felt really bad – I just didn’t know if he understood the extent of what he did. The thing that men don’t realise, when they hit a woman in the face – the broken arm, the black eye, it’s going to heal. That’s not the problem. It’s the scar inside. You flashback, you remember it all the time. It comes back to you whether you like it or not, and it’s painful. I don’t think he understood that – they never do, they can’t know that.’

Rihanna also worried that if she had stayed with Chris, other girls with physically abusive partners might follow her example and end up being killed. This was not something she was prepared to accept: she had to become a good role model and walk away. Chris might never have laid a finger on her again, but Rihanna was scared that the boyfriends of the other girls might have hurt them.

When the internet website TMZ published a leaked photo of Rihanna two weeks after the incident, showing all her facial injuries, she was more than upset. She told
Glamour
magazine: ‘It was humiliating; that is not a photo you would show to anybody. I felt completely taken advantage of. I felt like people were making it into a fun topic on the Internet, and it’s my life. I was disappointed, especially when I found out the photo was [supposedly leaked by] two women.’

In many ways she felt as if her life had been turned upside down overnight, and she also revealed to
Glamour
: ‘I felt like I went to sleep as Rihanna and woke up as Britney Spears.’ However, she was glad that she chose to do the interview with Diane Sawyer on
Good Morning America
, because of how it made her feel and the message it sent out to other young women. She told MTV: ‘It was the biggest weight lifted off my chest. If you watch the interview, you see it was a subject that I didn’t talk about for the eight months that I didn’t talk about it, so that was my first real time opening up. I had a lot of tension bottled up. So when I finally spoke about it, it felt really good. More importantly, it felt good that people got something positive out of it, because it’s devastating. It’s not fun to talk about or listen to, but there are a lot of women who are going through it, a lot of teenagers who are scared to talk about it, so I thought it was a good thing that I can be that voice for them and help them get out of that situation.’

In another interview, she admitted that Chris had never hit her before that night but that he had shown signs of being controlling. She felt he was rather insecure at times and she revealed to
W
magazine: ‘When people are insecure they become very controlling and they can get very aggressive and in turn abusive. It doesn’t have to be physical. Like, they would say bad stuff to you to make you feel lesser than them just so they would have control in the relationship. It takes a big toll on your emotions and on your everyday life. It changes you.’

Ever since the incident occurred, interviewers have
constantly asked Rihanna about it, and even now, she still gets hassled. Rihanna would much rather talk about her new music and what she is doing at the moment rather than dwell on the past. She wants to be famous for her music, not for being the girl who was attacked – and she doesn’t want to talk about Chris, which is completely understandable.

As well as God, her family and friends helping her to heal, music had a big part to play in her recovery too. She revealed to journalist Courtney Hazlett: ‘I can tell you that making this album [
Rated R
] was my recovery. It’s the way I vented and expressed myself.

‘The minute I decided to leave the house again, I called up [Roc Nation President] Jay Brown and said, “I want to do music, I want to go back in the studio” – and we just did that. We started collecting songs and sounds, and putting producers together, figuring out who we want to work with to develop new sounds.’

R
ihanna isn’t a big premiere person, and so when she was spotted on the red carpet in London for the premiere of Brad Pitt’s
Inglourious Basterds
in July 2009, the media started to ask why. They found out that she was there with Mr Hudson, an R&B singer on Kanye West’s record label G.O.O.D. (Getting Out Our Dreams) and nine years her senior. They were on a date, but they didn’t stand near each other on the red carpet: he was nonetheless there as her ‘plus one’.

The
Mirror
reported that Rihanna met Mr Hudson (real name is Ben Hudson) while he was recording in the US, and afterwards the pair had kept in contact before arranging their date. Their source said the two had been meeting secretly, and once they got inside the cinema, they ‘stuck together like glue.’

Afterwards it is thought that they went to the exclusive Mayfair restaurant Cipriani for something to eat, and then on to the movie premiere’s afterparty at the Shoreditch House members’ club.

When interviewed by BBC Radio 1Xtra the next week, Mr Hudson said: ‘We just went to the pictures. She works hard, she’s got to have something to look forward to at the end of the day.’ He was then asked: ‘Is there a relationship blooming?’, to which he replied: ‘No comment. I don’t kiss and tell. I’m old fashioned, what can I say?’

And he was even asked about their date by the
New York Daily News.
He told them: ‘We went to the movies. She’s single, I’m single. I could say to a girl, “We’re gonna do something this weekend,” and at the last minute I’ll be like, “Lil Wayne wants me to play trombone on his new track and I have to go do that.”’

But the media were desperate for stories about Rihanna’s love life and refused to leave her alone. She only had to be seen talking to a guy and they would be considered as dating. Only the week before the premiere, the press were saying that she was dating the rapper/producer Pharrell Williams! They claimed she was ringing him all time, going to his gigs and meeting up in the evenings while the pair were both in London.

The press also linked her to a man she used to date in Barbados when she was a teenager, after they were spotted on the beach together when she went home to see her family. Negus Sealy is three years older than RiRi and was photographed with her on the beach, holding on to her
wrists and giving her a piggyback ride. He is supposed to have the nickname ‘Love God’, and the press suggested they were getting back together, although this was not the case: RiRi and Negus are just good friends now.

R
ihanna’s first release of 2009, and also her first after the attack, was ‘Run This Town’ with Jay-Z and Kanye West. It was included on Jay-Z’s album,
The Blueprint 3
, and was released on 11 August in the US (31 August in the UK). The song reached No. 2 in the US charts and No. 1 in the UK.

Rihanna, Jay-Z and Kanye won two Grammys for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration and Best Rap, and a People’s Choice Award for ‘Favourite Music Collaboration’. The critics gave very mixed reviews; some were extremely positive, some very negative and others were in the middle. One of the most positive reviews was by Pitchfork Media, who declared: ‘There’s something for everybody: Jay-Z sounds engaged in a way he rarely has since unretiring, Rihanna coos those “ay ay’s” the radio loves, and Kanye
West, as you may have read, once again upstages the guy he’s producing. Rihanna’s hook may not be ‘Auto-Tune’d, but it’s definitely autopilot.’

The track samples the song ‘Someday in Athens’ by the 70s band, The 4 Levels of Existence. Jay-Z explained what it was about to DJ Time Westwood, simply saying: ‘We basically run this town: it’s myself, Rihanna and Kanye. It’s pretty much it.’

The trio filmed the video in Fort Totten Park, New York. It was directed by Anthony Mandler and had lots of extras carrying fire torches and metal bars, with bandannas covering their mouths, listening to what their leaders were saying. There were explosions and during one section of the video, Jay-Z sings in a temple, guarded by members of the mob. The video ends with the three of them standing in an underground chamber.

Anthony Mandler explained to MTV how they came up with the concept of the video: ‘There’s a tone and feeling to the song, there’s a militia, a march and a kind of rambunctious energy to it that, for me, I immediately wanted to tap into. I showed [Jay-Z] some references from the classic rebellious zones of the world. We live in a very orderly society in America, but when you get into Brazil, you get into the Middle East, you get into Africa, you get into Eastern Europe, when you get into places like that, there’s a different sort of “we run this town” [going on]. There’s less order and more chaos. So we looked at a lot of those references, new photos and historical photos, to capture that kind of falling-apart feeling.’

He added: ‘We wanted you to feel uneasy throughout the piece, we wanted there to be a constant layer of tension through the piece. Even in the way I shot – where the camera comes by Jay, it doesn’t stop on him, it goes to Rihanna – there’s kind of this chaos of revealing and covering and concealing. And things happen off-screen that you don’t see.’