Rihanna's 777 Tour picture album. Rihanna has the number one album in the country this week with
Unapologetic,
her seventh studio album in seven years. Though the singer has charted
12 number one singles over the course of her career, it's actually her
first time at the top of the
Billboard 200.
"Wait!!!!! What the F**K?!!!!
just debuted at #1 in AMERICA!!!!! My first number 1 album there!!!
Thank you Navy, u deserve it," Rihanna tweeted shortly after the news
broke, displaying her typical candor. She then added, "I'm legit crying
like a pussy right now!!"
While Rihanna certainly has a lot to
celebrate (we're guessing there will be at least one bottle of Ace of
Spades involved, given her taste in bubbly), the news comes at an
interesting juncture in her career. The Barbados-born singer recently
faced some of her worst press to date, having barely participated in the
poorly orchestrated publicity stunt that was her 777 tour. There are
rumors of excessive partying, fables about her chronic tardiness. And of
course there's her rumored reconciliation with her abusive ex-boyfriend
Chris Brown. It's not hard to imagine there are more than a few people on Rihanna's team who are attempting to jump ship, as the
New York Daily News hinted on Tuesday.
Rihanna wouldn't have named her album
Unapologetic
if she were concerned with what people thought of her; brazen
raunchiness has been key to her brand for years now. But it's hard not
to wonder if that raunchiness will give way to recklessness. Bad
behavior might get her a lot of attention, but Rihanna has too much to
lose to play so hard.
Rihanna is the first to admit that she has no interest in being a role model. Last year, she told
Vogue
UK that leading an exemplary life has nothing to do with being a
pop star. "See, people – especially white people – they want me to be a
role model just because of the life I lead," she noted. "The things I
say in my songs, they expect it of me and being a role model became more
of my job than I wanted it to be. But no, I just want to make music.
That’s it."
But this resistance to PG-13 presentation has cost
the singer jobs. In August, some months after she started using the
hashtag "#420" and even allowed photographers to snap her
rolling some kind of special cigarette on a poor man's head, skincare company Nivea
dropped the singer
as its spokesmodel. CEO Stefan Heidenreich stated, "I do not understand
how to bring the core brand of Nivea in conjunction with Rihanna. Nivea
is a company which stands for trust, family, and reliability."
Howard
Bragman, vice chairman of Reputation.com, believes Rihanna's bad girl
antics won't affect her career in the long run. "She's sexy, she's
beautiful, [her fans] like that. Girls wanna be here, men want to do
her. It doesn't seem to be a big problem," he asserts. But her
relationship with Chris Brown is another story.
"I
think that's a lot more troublesome in the long run," Bragman says.
Like many who've cringed in reaction to the singer's renewed interest in
Brown, Bragman is disgusted by the message it sends. "She empowers him
and I hate it, I hate it for her, I hate it for the message it's
sending," he says. "There's too many people who have real problems."
Brown's
made it harder to give him the benefit of the doubt, too, by
consistently responding to criticism with defensiveness and general
repugnance. On Sunday he shuttered his Twitter account after he spewed a
bunch of misogynistic vitriol at a comedian who'd poked fun of him one
time too many, threatening, among other things, to defecate in her eye. A
real charmer, that one. And Rihanna's made her association with him
impossible to ignore via song (see the laughably ironic
"Nobody's Business"). Even those who claim no interest in her private life are forced to confront it.
Rihanna already has a tight grip on superstardom. By
Forbes' estimations, she raked in over $50 million in the past year, and can apparently afford to fly to Germany to
hang out with her "lover."
But it's hard to say if she'll remain an enduring force in the music
industry when she's forging her identity on rebellion alone.
-Culled From Zimbio