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It is a bold presumption of emotional access. "My understanding, from the moment she sat down, was that we were in love," July continues. But millions of fans don't seem to need it explained to them. It makes you sound dumb to talk about this stuff, which is why no one could tell me exactly what it was about Rihanna. Her final observation of the star is about her soul: "Souls don't really care about good or bad, right or wrong - they're just true. She's so down-to-earth."īut after meeting Rihanna, words fail July, too.
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#RIHANNA GREATEST HITS 2015 DRIVER#
Miranda July wrote about this phenomenon in her 2015 profile of the pop icon, where she describes how various people responded when she asked them about Rihanna: "A lesbian art history professor told me that she's 'the real deal.' Others used the words 'magic' and 'epic.' But when I tried to get anyone to pinpoint things she had said or done - particular interviews or incidents - everyone became lost in inarticulacy." When July told her Uber driver he was taking her to interview Rihanna, he responded, "You kidding? That's my girl," he said. Those who claim to love Rihanna often say it's because of her soul, or her energy. Men build civilizations and create great works, while women animate spaces and connect people with their nurturing souls and alluring energy." In her lead essay for the first iteration of Turning the Tables, a list of the 150 greatest albums by women in the pop era, Ann Powers notes that descriptions of greatness are often gendered: "Women are linked to the natural and the timeless, while men innovate and make history. Rihanna performs during the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards. The only thing Rihanna did, according to this syntactical choice, was remain the same. Drake's speech focuses on the product: It was the music that changed styles and the videos that changed artistic vision. She spoke about how her success is never just about her - it's about Barbados, her family, her fans and "women, black women." She also went on to thank the directors who went along with her "crazy ideas" - her subtle way of asserting what Drake did not: that she is pop music's vanguard, and that the work itself is where her prowess lies. Rihanna was gracious in her acceptance speech. "We love the music, which can change styles from album to album, we love the videos, which change their artistic vision from year to year, but most of all, we love the woman, who hasn't changed since day one." "She succeeds by doing something that no one in this music industry does, which is being herself," Drake said. To really love Rihanna, one must respect that we so often find lovable about her - her so-called 'relatability' - is also her work. He mentioned her achievements in music but ultimately asserted that what was "most impressive" was Rihanna the person. His speech is memorable for his cute, unsurprising and ultimately distracting faux-confession: "She's someone I've been in love with since I was 22 years old." Equally instructive, though, are the parts of Drake's speech that were about Rihanna and not Drake. When Rihanna received the Video Vanguard Award at the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards, Drake introduced her. It's still worth asking, however, how we as an audience can adequately love Rihanna the person. Rihanna is the most important pop artist of the century because of these contributions to music - and her music is beloved.
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If she's not seen as taking musical risks, it's only because so many of them paid off. Rihanna shaped the texture and taste of the air by consistently doing what pop, at its very best, is supposed to do: taking disparate genres - rock, EDM, dancehall, trap and even dubstep - and turning them into something that makes sense to us, to everyone. So it's not enough to say Rihanna is the air. 1 songs on Billboard's Dance Club Songs chart as ANTI, the album Rihanna released in 2016 after an unprecedented (for her) hiatus.įor most of my life, there has been a Rihanna single - or multiple Rihanna singles, or multiple songs defined by a Rihanna hook - playing prominently on Top 40 radio. Of the 61 Rihanna songs on the Billboard Hot 100, 14 of them were No. She released a full-length studio album every single year between 20, save for a one-year break in 2008. What does it mean to think of Rihanna, global superstar, as unheard? Her music has soundtracked most of this century, and that kind of ubiquity is easily taken for granted, like air. Rihanna at the album artwork reveal for ANTI in 2015.Ĭhristopher Polk/Getty Images for WESTBURY ROAD ENTERTAINMENT LLC