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Rihanna · S1 E4
The Army Cadet
Rihanna joins the Barbados Cadet Corps and wins a school talent show singing a Mariah Carey cover. A classmate's father, who happens to know an American record producer, sees her perform and makes a phone call
A rented Lamborghini on a Los Angeles street, February 8, 2009. The night before the Grammys, Rihanna reads a text on Chris Brown's phone and the argument that follows will leave her face unrecognizable.
Rihanna -- Disturbia (official music video). Dark, claustrophobic, and full of fractured imagery. Released months before the assault, the video now feels like a premonition of what was coming.
Disturbia (2008)
From Good Girl Gone Bad: Reloaded, produced by Chris Brown and Brian Kennedy. The synth riff is anxious and repetitive, looping like an intrusive thought that will not stop. Rihanna's vocal is half sung, half whispered, as if she is narrating her own unraveling. The song reached number one in the US before anyone knew what was about to happen in her life.
February 8, 2009
After a pre-Grammy party, an argument in the car escalates. Chris Brown punches Rihanna repeatedly, bites her ear, and threatens to kill her. She is left with a swollen face, split lip, and bruises across her body. A leaked police photo of her injuries circles the world within days.
TAP TO REVEAL: How did the public learn what happened?
“I felt like I went to sleep as Rihanna and I woke up as Britney Spears. That was the level of media chaos.”
— Rihanna, Vanity Fair, November 2015
Shut Up and Drive (Rihanna)
From Good Girl Gone Bad (2007). A rock-edged pop track about confidence and forward motion. It captures the version of Rihanna that existed right before the world tried to define her by someone else's violence.
Which album did Rihanna release in the months following the assault?
The world expects Rihanna to retreat. Instead, she records the darkest album of her career in nine months and comes back louder, angrier, and more prolific than anyone thought possible.
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