Rihanna's show too hot for some

Rihanna has come under fire for some of her on-stage antics in Sydney this week. Photon / Getty Images

Bad girl of pop Rihanna arrived in New Zealand yesterday, ahead of three shows in three days.

Far from her image of raunchy gyrations and lewd lyrics, however, the star was "lovely" to everyone and slept most of the way from Sydney to Auckland, said a person on the Qantas flight.

The Barbados-born singer, 25, has been on her Diamonds World Tour since March, but has been criticised for frequently groping herself during her concerts.

One Trade Me user said yesterday they were selling their tickets because they didn't want to take their younger daughter any more. The seller said they "didn't realise it was an R18-type concert. Not comfortable taking her."

Rihanna's most recent music video, Pour It Up, has her in a diamond-studded bra that leaves little to the imagination while she grinds and twerks on a gold throne, stuffs money down her underwear and smokes a cigar.

Other women in underwear spend half the video pole-dancing and the other half aggressively twerking. The video was banned from YouTube after just 10 minutes but has since been put back online.

In Australia, Rihanna was 40 minutes late for her first show, in Perth, nearly an hour and a half late in Adelaide and 20 minutes in Sydney.

Critics accused the singer of being drunk on stage and slurring, being uninterested, lip-syncing and having poor sound design.

After New Zealand, she heads to South Africa and the Middle East before ending her nine-month tour in the US.