Rihanna opts for cute and comfy on the cover of The FADER‘s 100th issue.
In its accompanying photo spread, the 27-year-old entertainer smokes a blunt and pretty much does what only Rihanna can do.
Read an excerpt from her cover story below.
For almost a decade Rihanna released
an album per year, but it’s been over 1,000 days since her last one.
Sure, there have been singles, collaborations with Eminem, and
“FourFiveSeconds” with Kanye West and Paul McCartney. There was “Bitch
Better Have My Money,” a single and video that she directed with a
quartet of French men who go by the name MegaForce. There was the Met
Ball dress, Maori hand tattoos in New Zealand, tours through Dubai, and
crop overs at #heauxm. Countless magazine covers. Her River Island
collaboration. MAC Cosmetics deal. Dior ads. Hosiery collaborations.
PUMA campaign. Among this all, her music is more relevant than ever: in
July of this year, she became the first artist to surpass 100 million
gold and platinum certifications encompassing 37 separate singles to be
the winningest chart-topper in the history of cochleae.
Since summer 2014, Rihanna has
acknowledged an upcoming eighth album by using the umbrella hashtag #R8.
There have been maddening video snippets of her at work in the studio,
sessions with legendary vocal coach Kuk Harrell, and rumors that the
project will introduce a reinvented sound, a new Rihanna. In November
2014, Dash Radio host DJ Skee said an album was “closer than anyone
realized,” to which Rihanna responded on Twitter: “ANY news about #R8
will be delivered directly from me!!!!” Four months later, while
promoting the blockbuster movie Home, she told MTV she wants “soulful,”
“forever” songs to “perform in 15 years” that will still feel like they
represent her then. She has yet to formally announce the album’s
tracklist or release date.
For all this time, anxious fans have
been able to feel a sense of access to her, through Instagram, Snapchat,
Twitter. Rolling that blunt on the Coachella security guard’s head,
playing dress-up with baby Majesty, she feels like she belongs to us.
They say that certain politicians win by dint of how badly you want to
have a beer with them. No one doesn’t want to hang out with Rihanna. You
suspect that you could even be yourself around her. Have fun. She
certainly looks like she’s having a blast. On the one hand, it’s hard
not to want for her, at 27, to have a break from the rigors of the Q4
album rollout, to cheer her on for pausing and taking some time. On the
other, you can’t help but wonder if she’s sometimes felt just plainly
over music.
If this were a normal story, I’d tell
you what she ordered if we’d gone to Giorgio Baldis, her favorite L.A.
restaurant, even though she pretty much always gets the same thing
(fried calamari and pasta with tomato sauce). I’d tell you if she
smelled like Reb’l Fleur, her old fragrance, or, if she’s wearing RiRi,
and what that smells like. The story wouldn’t be so much about what she
said in response to my questions—Rihanna is media-trained—it would be
about registering any silences. Or flickers of eyelid. Or churlishness.
Or evasiveness. It would be reading tea leaves. It makes you wonder why
any savvy celebrity would ever agree to an interview, and understand why
in this case Rihanna did not.
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