Rihanna - In BLUE BIKINI on yacht in St Tropez

Robyn Rihanna Fenty (born February 20, 1988), better known as simply Rihanna (pronounced /riˈɑːnə/ ree-ah-nə or /riˈænə/ ree-an-ə), is a Barbadian R&B recording artist. Born in Saint Michael, Barbados, Rihanna moved to the United States at the age of 16 to pursue a recording career under the guidance of record producer Evan Rogers. She subsequently signed a contract with Def Jam Recordings after auditioning for then-label head Jay-Z

In 2005, Rihanna released her debut studio album, Music of the Sun, which peaked in the top ten of the Billboard 200 chart and features the Billboard Hot 100 hit single "Pon de Replay." Less than a year later, she released her second studio album, A Girl Like Me (2006), which peaked within the top five of the Billboard albums chart, and produced her first Hot 100 number one single, "SOS". Rihanna's third studio album, Good Girl Gone Bad (2007), spawned four chart-topping singles "Umbrella", "Take a Bow", "Disturbia" and "Don't Stop the Music", and was nominated for nine Grammy Awards, winning Best Rap/Sung Collaboration for "Umbrella," which features Jay-Z. Her fourth studio album Rated R, released in November 2009, produced the top 10 singles "Russian Roulette", "Hard" and "Rude Boy", which achieved the number-one spot on the Billboard Hot 100. Loud (2010), her fifth studio album, contains the number-one hits "Only Girl (In the World)", "What's My Name?" and "S&M


Rihanna has sold more than 20 million albums and 60 million singles which makes her one of the best selling artists of all time. She is the youngest artist in Billboard charts history to achieve ten number-one singles on the Hot 100. As of March 2010, Rihanna has sold approximately 5.4 million album units and over 33.7 million digital singles in the United States. Billboard named Rihanna the Digital Songs Artist of the 2000s decade, and ranked her as the 17th Artist of the 2000s decade. She has received several accolades, including the 2007 World Music Awards for World's Best-Selling Pop Female Artist and Female Entertainer of the Year, and the 2011 Brit Award for Best International Female Solo Artist. She has also amassed a total of four Grammy Awards, four American Music Awards, and eighteen Billboard Music Awards. Rihanna has also been apointed the offical ambassador of youth and culture for Barbados

In December 2003, Rihanna met American music producer Evan Rogers through a mutual friend, who knew Rogers' wife, when he and his Bajan-born wife were in Barbados for the holidays.Rihanna and her two bandmates auditioned for Rogers in his hotel room, who said that "the minute Rihanna walked into the room, it was like the other two girls didn't exist." While auditioning for Rogers, she sang Destiny's Child's cover of "Emotion". Impressed, Rogers set up a second meeting, with her mom present, and invited her to do some recording and write with him and Carl Sturken at their studio in New York. Shortly after turning 16, she won the Miss Combermere school beauty pageant and her high school talent show with a performance of Mariah Carey's "Hero". Over the next year, Rihanna and her mom shuttled back and forth to Rogers' home in Stamford, Connecticut. With the help of Sturken, she recorded a four-song demo, which included the ballad "Last Time", a cover of Whitney Houston's "For the Love of You", and what would become her first hit, "Pon de Replay". It took a year to record the demos, because Rihanna was going to school and would only record during summer and Christmas school breaks.


In January 2005, Rogers began shopping Rihanna's four-song demo to various recording companies. A copy of the demo was sent to Def Jam Recordings, where Jay Brown, an A&R executive, overheard it and played it for the label's then-president, Jay-Z. When he heard "Pon de Replay", Jay-Z was skeptical about Rihanna at first because he felt that the song was too big for her, stating that "when a song is that big, it's hard [for a new artist] to come back from. I don't sign songs, I sign artists". Def Jam was the first label to respond and invited her to audition where she sang "For the Love of You" for L.A. Reid of Island Def Jam Music Group and Jay-Z. She was signed the same day and canceled a set of meetings with other labels. After signing with Def Jam in February 2005, she relocated in the United States and moved in with Rogers and his wife. Although she still thinks of herself as Robyn, she chose her middle name as her stage name because to her, the name Rihanna is just a stage that started in a recording studio in 2005

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Rihanna - In BLUE BIKINI on yacht in St Tropez