Rihanna: Pop's Biggest Rebel

Rihanna is more than a superstar. She's the ultimate icon of the digital age. She's had more Number One singles in 10 years than Madonna has managed in three decades, and she's now the First Lady of the new free NME. Peter Robinson went to LA to hang out with pop's biggest rebel.

- Peter Robinson

SHE’S THE FIRST artist to shift 100m digital singles; Vogue calls her the world’s most exciting fashion muse; in music, her varied collaborators are an A-list dream team, from Drake, Paul McCartney and Coldplay to Eminem, Kanye and Nicki Minaj. Rihanna is, therefore, a person who can afford to run to her own schedule. It’s approaching midnight when she sits down with NME in the low-lit upstairs room of an LA photo studio.

It’s been a long day. We first meet during the afternoon, and while it’s hard to predict how a Rihanna greeting might unfold, NME isn’t quite prepared for the breezy stride into the room, the smiley.

“Hi!”, the hug and the high five. “I’m off!” she then declares grandly, waving her arm around her head, “to transform!”

She disappears into the room next door. At another shoot down the corridor Will Ferrell comes and goes, but not before popping in to say hi to Rihanna.

When Rihanna reappears, she does so with a melodramatic, pre-emptive cry of “Finally!”, but it’s fine: waiting a few hours is fine for Rihanna.

Between 2005 and 2012 Rihanna released or re-released at least one album a year, every year. Then in 2013 something strange happened: no Rihanna album. But at least it’s finished, right?

“It’s not done!” Rihanna chortles. By now she’s curled up on a sofa and draped in an oversized green bomber jacket. “To me it’s never done until it’s done. Until the final moment.”