Rihanna: 'That's a part of my life I want to throw away'

Days before her 21st birthday R&B star Rihanna was viciously beaten by her then boyfriend, the singer Chris Brown. The shocking police photo told the whole story. But now, with a new album, she explains why she's no victim

'Before, young girls would look at me and think my life was perfect. Now they realise it's not.' Photograph: William Selden Rihanna's head soars above the cloud of stylists, photographers, PR people and managers that mill around her, completely disproving the notion that celebrities tend to be smaller in real life. In her strappy, stompy gladiator heels, with a bronze helmet of hair, long beige nails, eyes rimmed with bright pink shadow, she is statuesque, towering, a picture of power. She stares into the camera, turning her head very deliberately this way and that. As the photographer clicks, a series of perfect images appears on the monitor, not a single one mid-blink or slack-jawed. This professional focus is one side of the R&B singer. The other is playful, uproarious, a reflection of the fact that Rihanna is still only 21, and determined to enjoy herself. And so, before the shoot starts, she mugs and mimes ridiculous poses; she asks her make-up artist to cover a small bruise on her leg, whooping in explanation: "I had some really wild sex last night – just kidding!" She goes for lunch in a side room with her entourage, including old friends from Barbados, and laughter gasps through the closed door. When I ask whether her hard-edged style – futuristic dresses, mesh jumpsuits, trouser suits with enormous, exaggerated shoulders – owes anything to Grace Jones, she says that she loves her, "but Cruella de Vil, from 101 Dalmatians, is my new style icon. She's just fly." Her laughter sometimes seems forced – her unhappiest stories can end with a "ha!" – but mostly it comes across as real. Advertisement Of course, none of this tallies with the most notorious image of Rihanna to emerge this year, in a picture taken in February by the Los Angeles Police Department. It was snapped at the end of an evening that had started well, with Rihanna and her then boyfriend, R&B star and kids' favourite Chris Brown – who was 19 at the time – hanging out at a pre-Grammy awards party. Both were scheduled to appear at the awards ceremony the next evening, but it wasn't to be: when they left the party, Brown attacked Rihanna in their Lamborghini. Police documents alleged that a verbal argument led Brown to try, unsuccessfully, to force Rihanna out of the car. It was then claimed that he shoved her head against the car window, punched her repeatedly in the face, bit her left ear, bit her fingers and placed her in a headlock until she began to lose consciousness. Brown was charged with felony assault and making criminal threats; he reached a plea bargain by pleading guilty to the first charge and was sentenced in June to six months' community labour and five years' probation. Advertisement The photograph of Rihanna should never have been made public – domestic violence victims are generally anonymous – but it was leaked to the gossip website TMZ.com. Here was a beautiful young woman who had recorded three successful albums in two years (her most recent, Good Girl Gone Bad, went multi-platinum), she was the first Barbadian to win a Grammy, had spent 10 weeks at number one in the UK with her irresistible 2007 hit Umbrella. There was shock at suddenly seeing her as a victim – her eyes were lowered, her skin swollen, there were welts to her forehead, bruising and marks to her mouth and cheeks. The picture gave the lie to the stereotype of domestic violence victims as older, obviously downtrodden women. It showed, as Rihanna has said herself, that this could "happen to anyone". At the same time, it exposed the extent to which people still blame the victims of such attacks. A survey of 200 teenagers in Boston, for example, found that 46% thought that Rihanna was responsible for what had happened, while 52% said that both parties bore responsibility. On her new album, Rated R, Rihanna plays with this new public perception of her. The cover of the first single, Russian Roulette, for instance, shows her wrapped in barbed wire, while the video depicts her, variously, in a police cell, facing a man with a gun, abandoned on a road, and with blood seeping through her skin. Then there are the lyrics to the song Stupid In Love ("My new nickname is you idiot... I still love you, but I just can't do this"), and the photo shoot for the September issue of Italian Vogue in which she was pictured in a muzzle. Robyn Rihanna Fenty was born in 1988, in Barbados; she has two younger bothers. She grew up in the parish of Saint Michael, "in a slightly less than average neighbourhood", she shrugs – "It wasn't the poorest, and it definitely wasn't the richest" – and she always knew she wanted to sing. She would croon in the shower to her favourites: "The divas," she sighs happily. "Whitney Houston, Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, Shania Twain. I loved Luther Vandross. Still love him. And reggae was standard. You always listen to reggae in Barbados." She was determined to succeed, but there were no singing lessons to be had, no dancing lessons, and serious problems at home. Her father, Ronald, was a crack-cocaine addict who was physically abusive to her mother, Monica. Since Rihanna describes her mother as "one of the strongest women I know, if not the strongest", the abuse must have been bewildering. Then there was the added psychological confusion of loving someone who was abusive. When she remembers the positive moments of her childhood, Rihanna says she always thinks "about learning to swim, learning how to ride my bike, and it's funny, because most of these times were with my dad". But as she grew older, there was a time when she "hated him. Then, one of my school friends, who I was very close to, she knew, and she always used to say, 'You can't hate your father', that you have to love him, at the end of the day, because he's your father. So I listened, as much as it took out of me." The two of them were reconciled, until recently. "I haven't been in touch with my dad for a year and a half, by his choice… He came on tour and acted a mess again, and we sent him home, and after that he didn't answer my calls." She gives the small, rat-a-tat laugh that signals a topic is closed. When she was eight or nine, Rihanna's parents separated and she was left looking after her youngest brother, Rajad. "My mom was a single mom, so she worked a lot. She was really never home – I mean, she was home, but it would be after work, late at night, so I would take care of him. He was my best friend. He thought I was his mom!" Rajad is 13 now. "So cute… I don't think he'll ever be bad," she says, "until he's, like, 19." As a child, Rihanna says, she "was a nerd. Too nerdy. I read all the time." But as she moved into her teens, her interest in school waned. At lunchtimes she would sing with a couple of other girls – nothing serious – until one day one of them set up an audition with a family friend, US songwriter and producer Evan Rogers, who was on holiday with his Barbadian wife. "We sang as a group," says Rihanna, "and then we sang individually, and Evan expressed an interest in helping me get a solo deal." I expect her to say that this was a brilliant moment, but her mouth turns down. "It was a really difficult place to be, because obviously I didn't want to hurt my friend's feelings, I didn't want to betray her, but it was a reality. We had auditioned together, and individually, and that was it." At 15, she began travelling between Barbados and the US in the school holidays to work on a demo. At 16, her songs were taken to Jay-Z, then president of Def Jam Recordings, who immediately signed her up. Again, it should have been an exciting time – her first single, the summery, dancehall-tinged Pon De Replay, was a sizeable hit – but nasty gossip took the shine off her success. "It was like, 'Of course she had to give [Jay-Z] a blow job to get that deal.' That rumour was everywhere in Barbados, and it was so disgusting, it made me feel really weird – I would even be weird around Jay-Z. I wouldn't be able to look him in the eye. One day, he called and he was like, 'Yo, you can't buy into these rumours, you can't let people move you with anything they say.' The rumours started getting very funny to me after that." In those early days, Rihanna had a much softer image – in the Pon De Replay video, she dances around a nightclub in a crop top and baggy jeans, long hair floating around her shoulders. She obviously had a strong voice, and she could dance, too, but there wasn't that much to distinguish her from the other single-name starlets. There was also a sense of her life being out of her control. She talked of the strain of her schedule, the loneliness of spending night after night in hotel rooms. Ironically, in a year in which she's been portrayed as a victim, Rihanna actually seems happier and more in control now. "Absolutely," she says, "and I kind of had to fight for it. In the beginning it was almost like I was just going along with a script that was written for me, and I didn't feel like an artist, I felt like a tool. I just felt, hey, here I am, this money-making vehicle for this big record label [and] I'm not even having fun, I'm not enjoying it, because I'm not able to be who I am… Then, finally, I said, 'You know what, if I want to do this, I'm going to do it my way' and I just rebelled, cut my hair, dyed it black, changed my image, changed my sound, and now we're still evolving because I'm 21, I'm still growing. I've been through a lot in the last two years, especially in the last year or so. It definitely forced me to do some growing up." We start talking obliquely about the assault. "A whole thing happened overnight this year," she says, "the night before the biggest performance of my career, as well as 10 days before I became 21. It was a turning point. It was the end of an incredible year, an incredible album [Good Girl Gone Bad], the beginning of a new era, and it just felt like it was a wake-up call for me, and it had to happen. As bad and as terrible as it was, there's so much great that came out of that situation." I must look surprised, but she continues. "Even for him [I assume she means Chris Brown], like, he knows now that he's never going to do that again. And now, young girls also, they learn from it, and I really hope young men can learn from it. Even more than the girls, the men really need to learn from it. Because everyone's focusing on the women, but the problem isn't the women." Rihanna spoke about the attack recently in an interview on US TV, discussing the fact that Brown was "definitely my first big love", explaining that she briefly reconciled with him in the weeks after the assault, and then decided her actions were setting a bad example for young girls. "I realised that my selfish decision for love could result in some girl getting killed," she said. "I could not be easy with that part. I couldn't be held responsible for telling them, go back. Even if Chris never hit me again, who's to say that [their abusers] won't kill these girls?" Would she ever use her experience to help others? She says yes, but "I don't want that stamp going across my head as a victim of domestic violence." She pauses. "As much as I was, that's a part of my life that I want to throw away, that I never want to go through again." I ask how she felt about the leaking of the police photograph. "It was a confidential case, by law," she says, "so when it became about getting a cheque, and completely disrespecting somebody else's privacy, it was just disappointing. I expect that from TMZ, but if the police can't protect you, then you can't be safe. You just feel completely exposed. And I was very disappointed," that word again, "especially when I found out that it was [supposedly leaked by] women. Two women." She recently came up with a great phrase to describe her situation, saying that on the night of the attack, she went to bed as Rihanna and woke up as Britney Spears. But if she's determined not to be cast as a victim, she still strives to take something positive from the publication of the photographs. "Before, young girls would look at me, and they thought my life was perfect, but now they realise that it's not. Nobody's perfect. I'm living the same human life that they are, just with a more public career – and when they realise that I do go through dumb stuff like that – all of a sudden that makes me human for them. So now I feel really strong, but I also feel very open." In a good way? She smiles widely. "In a great way."