Rihanna performing at the Super Bowl halftime show. Photo / AP
OPINION:
When you’re a global superstar, every week is arguably your week – but Rihanna’s past five days have been the stuff of legend. It started on a high note, with Sunday’s Super Bowl performance and the show-stealing revelation that she was pregnant again a mere nine months after giving birth to her son (supermodel Cara Delevingne summed up the mood by wearing a T-shirt saying ‘Rihanna concert interrupted by football game. Weird but whatever’).
Three days later, she appeared on the cover of British Vogue, striding barefoot across a moonlit Los Angeles beach with her partner A$AP Rocky following behind her, carrying their plump-cheeked firstborn in his arms. The symbolism was clear: we’re all trailing in Rihanna’s wake.
It’s a high-powered return from maternity leave. Since her baby boy was born last May, Rihanna, 35, had gone quiet – not surprising with a newborn. But it’s a marked change in behaviour from her pregnancy, where she regularly graced the red carpet – and broke the internet – with her bump-baring outfits, complete with belly chains, sheer dresses and leather minis. So, the Super Bowl performance was quite the comeback. She belted out her hits wearing a red jumpsuit coupled with a patent leather breastplate by JW Anderson, creative director at Spanish fashion house Loewe. She seemed in her element showing off her baby bump and swaying along with the music, in contrast to her gyrating white-clad dancers (who – according to Twitter – looked a bit like sperm zoning in on an egg).
It was an extraordinary show, not least because being pregnant along with being a mother to a nine-month-old would leave most women unable to write a coherent email, let alone perform on a global stage for billions. But Rihanna is no stranger to work, work, work – as her song says.
She is one of the most successful and richest artists on earth – and a globally famous businesswoman with a beauty and underwear brand worth a staggering $2.8 billion (£2.3billion), nine Grammy awards under her belt, an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song (from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever) and a seemingly perfect family.
This was underlined by the fact that the two most talked-about elements of the show were the bump reveal and her almost comic nod to her billion-dollar beauty company, Fenty. The latter happened early on when she slowly and deliberately paused to dust some powder on her nose with a branded compact, and it was such an obvious sell that you had to applaud her cool-girl insouciance.
Her star power meant nobody seemed all that bothered – her fans were as adoring as ever. Rihanna, I suspect, could have done the whole thing on a comfy chair in slippers and still have been called a dazzling performer.
Not that it has always been plain sailing for the star. The Barbados-born singer has been in the public eye since she was just 17 and released her first single Pon de Replay in 2005 – but it was with the release of Good Girl Gone Bad in 2007 and her hit single Umbrella that she hit her stride. And what a stride it was: with 250 million records sold worldwide, she is the second-best-selling female music artist of all time after Madonna.
While her career was skyrocketing, however, her love life was not, and the world was shocked in 2009 when her then-boyfriend, the rapper Chris Brown, assaulted her the night before the Grammys (for which he was arrested and sentenced). Famously private, Rihanna withdrew in the months following, and her friends, family and fans have greeted her seemingly very happy relationship with A$AP – who she has known since her Diamond Tour in 2013 – with delight. She told Vogue they are “best friends with a baby” – and she is envious that their son, whose name she is keeping private, seems to prefer A$AP even though she gave birth to him.
Unsurprisingly, the Super Bowl has been trying to get her to perform in the legendary halftime slot for years, but she always turned them down in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick – the former quarterback who famously took a knee during the anthem in 2016.
So, what changed? Two factors; the first – according to her interview with British Vogue – was her desire to see more black representation on stage during America’s most-watched television event; the second was wanting to set an example for her son.
“Raising a young black man is one of the scariest responsibilities in life … You’re like, ‘What am I leaving my kids to? This is the planet they’re gonna be living on?’” she said.
Given their genes, they should be okay - as evidenced by the excitement when the photographs accompanying her British Vogue article dropped on Wednesday evening. Styled by editor-in-chief Edward Enninful and shot by ultra-fashionable photography duo Inez and Vinoodh on the beaches of Los Angeles, they provided a surprisingly intimate glimpse into the superstar’s family life.
It’s all but impossible to steal the show from Rihanna, but her baby did a stellar job of trying. Armed with his own stylist (not a particularly difficult role given he mostly wore nappies), her son is one of very few Vogue cover stars to have been actively encouraged to grin with delight for the camera. One particularly sweet picture showed him gurgling on a red satin sheet (what else?) with his chubby baby hands clutching his feet. And showing the world that she’s an adoring parent like any other, Rihanna posted that particular shot on Instagram with the caption ‘my perfect baby!!!’.
Winning herself legions of fans among the exhausted mothers and fathers of the world, she explained in the article that she and A$AP had navigated his early weeks without any help.
“Oh, my gosh, those first days are insane,” she told British Vogue. “You don’t sleep. At all. Not even if you wanted to. We came home, cold turkey, had no one. It was just us as parents and our baby. Man, you’re a zombie for the most part.”
Although if anyone can make being a zombified new parent look not only glamorous but very sexy, it’s Rihanna. The rest of us – much like A$AP Rocky – can merely trail behind her.
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