@badGalRiri Career Avenues
READING TIME: 10 MINUTES
In any industry, it’s very easy to be impressionable as a young adult particularly in the entertainment industry. Yet Rihanna always established herself as staying true to herself and following her own direction. Ten years ago marked the beginning of her 20s...a time for one’s self-exploration and experimentation in all facets of life and to become definitive about your passions and likes/dislikes (which can be difficult in the public eye). Casting back to 2008 was at the height of her GoodGirlGoneBad era scoring hit after hit after hit. In this series of posts of superstar analysis, it’s interesting to just look back and see how, for example Rihanna, she’s stayed on top till this day unlike most of her other peers of the time who have slowly vanished from the scene.
Personally the three biggest public challenges she’s had to face is her career with an attachment to a male counterpart, record label issues and establishing herself as a successful black female who is not Beyonce.
By her superstardom success in 2009, Rihanna’s domestic violence incident with Chris Brown was plastered over the world thus leaving her vulnerability in the spotlight. Nevertheless it eventually led to a more independent and unapologetic young woman. #Aubrih teased us this decade, but Drake is at the peak of his career and never was ready to commit in a serious relationship with the Bajan Princess. So that’s when the globe was confounded in summer ‘17 her private long term relationship Saudi heir-to-Billion-Dollar fortune Hassan Jameel was blooming. Probably for the best it’s helped establish in the past decade that Rihanna never wants to attribute her success to being with any man as those in the past have always let her down one way or another. Her DefJam contract was initially 6 albums (extended to 7) in 7 years that at first seems skeptical. But it became apparent her intense work ethic was just to get out of her contract. It comes no surprise when she was probably exhausted with her continuous laborious contractual obligations with regards to promotion and the album creativity process and was ready to take her true musical vision into her own hands after yearly album releases from 2009 to 2012. Cleverly she was able to purchase the masters to her entire discography in 2016 and eventually set up her own record label Westbury Road. Lastly, only because they are black women, there is the constant Beyonce versus Rihanna comparisons even to this day. Beyonce was portrayed as the wholesome, well-rounded black female. GoodGirlGoneBad was the pinpoint of Rihanna’s transformation into the radically edge black girl - she was able to mould herself into this badgal image (which was a huge risk to her from her label’s perspective), an alternative to Beyonce, which she has retained up till today.
On a positive note she has probably become one of the top influencers of our generation in her creative avenues whether that be music, fashion or beauty.
Her musical career accomplishments are second to none sitting amongst legends like Madonna, Mariah Carey, Janet Jackson and Whitney Houston, who she cites as her own idols. As the Queen of Digital Sales and Streaming she has sold 200M certified records worldwide and gained a string of number ones and top ten hits in most global charts which no other artist of this generation has accomplished. From Only Girl and Man Down, to We Found Love and Diamonds, to FourFiveSeconds and BBHMM to Work and Wild Thoughts she has the knack to pick up what the radio will rave without compromising her artistic freedom making her the most successful radio artist of the past decade. Her catalogue displays a versatility of genres from dancehall to R&B, rock to ballads - that’s why she’s the most sought after artist for a successful feature this decade (giving Eminem and Calvin Harris, for example, their biggest hits of their careers) as she calls the shots for what sound will trend in the future (this decade’s being EDM or trap music). In turn the public consume whatever they’re given and her 9 Grammy Awards and these knock-off Rihanna new girls of today are indicative she’s making the right calls.
She didn’t stop at just her music career. She branched out. She took advantage by grabbing successful TV/film roles and becoming THE fashion and makeup icon. Her style is summarised as “it’s trash until Rihanna wears it”. She makes the most daring and avant-garde haute couture seem normal in public and magazines. Particular highlights include her Met Gala winning pieces in 2015 and 2017 dresses: the Guo Pei golden cape dress and Rei Kawakubo floral dress, respectively. She also rebranded PUMA in 2015 which was on the decline. This probably gave her the confidence to start her own brands which we now know of the beginning of Fenty: Fenty Beauty and Savage X Fenty. These ventures, beating out her competitors like KKW, MAC and Kylie Cosmetics, succeed due to the main selling point being inclusivity.
Lastly her humanitarian efforts was highlighted when she became the 2017 Harvard Humanitarian Award Recipient. It was a moment that showed the causes Rihanna partakes including but not limited to education access in the third world, women’s rights and poverty issues. Without even purposefully attracting attention to herself in these project she ends up bringing publicity to these issues. Whether it is joining the NYC Women’s March in 2017 to bringing about her own Scholarship Programme through the Clara Lionel Foundation and Global Citizen Project Rihanna continues to display wonderous acts of admiration and applause using her enormous platform to helping the less fortunate or those in less privileged circumstances.
The past decade seems like she makes it look easy but she’s definitely stood her ground under the constant scrutiny she got and still sometimes receives in all these fields, especially in her early years of her career. But she embodies the idiom practice makes perfect, to which she’s able to craft any creative project of hers into success. Despite her ever presence on social media letting her work speak for itself was a tactic that paid of rather than constantly overexposing herself. Sometimes it’s difficult to forget she was once 15 year old girl from Barbados who left her family to become an immigrant in America who showed that long-term and consistent hard work eventually pays off. We look forward to her 30s and the continuation of her building and conquering her Fenty Empire.
