It’s no secret that Rihanna, one of Pop’s fan-inaugurated Queens, is an icon. Her music, lyrics and videos pack a wallop. Her style is nothing short of unapologetic and effortless, whether she’s New York Fashion Week chic, a Barbadian Crop Over babe, or anything in between. So when the news dropped that NY Times Style Magazine is honoring her own cover on their “Inaugural Greats” issue, it was no surprise.
The interview she gives however, may surprise you. Miranda July recounts the hours before, during and after meeting the star, titling the article “A Very Revealing Conversation with Rihanna”. Creatively, Rihanna has pushed the boundaries, but the interview is revealing in a totally different way. We see different facets of her, what she was like at 11 years old, what it was like to leave Barbados at 14, living with and trusting people she barely knew. But the rawest quote the FourFiveSeconds singer gives July is about being a black woman and conducting business deals:
“It almost excites me…and I can’t wait to show them that I’m here to exceed [their] expectations.” Rihanna’s talking about hitting the glass ceiling, the road block a lot of black women hit in the professional world. It’s the “everyone’s cool with a black woman singing, dancing, partying and looking hot, but when it comes time to negotiate, to broker a deal, she is suddenly made aware of her blackness”, just on a larger scale. But she’s not the only one that the fame beasts have gotten to lately. Many celebrities across all realms of entertainment have been speaking out against injustices they’ve been facing inside and outside the industry.
Courtesy: NYTimes
One Direction announced that they would be taking a step back from their boy-band empire. The downsized foursome is not going on tour to promote their fifth studio album, Made in the A.M. as they have in the past. Instead, after all the interviews are done and the album drops on November 13th, the boys will be taking time off. “We’ve been touring every year since 2011. And we’ve made an album each year for five years,” member Harry Styles said to German outlet RTL Exclusiv, “now we’re taking a one year break.”
Courtesy: Pop Crush
“And that’s totally normal,” fellow member Louis Tomlinson, chimes in, to which Styles responds, “Yeah, many artists don’t tour constantly.” And they’re right. It is very rare to see a group or artist tour year after year. It would only be speculation, but the group’s incredible success could have a lot to do with it. Could their management and label want to milk the profits for as long as they could, at the boys’ expense? We’ve seen what the success and grueling work schedule can do to people without a proper break.
Even Justin Bieber, who is just as big, had not toured for that period of time. But he did take a break from music to have some ‘fun’. He was on the cover of almost every tabloid and his name in a headline guaranteed a click. But in hindsight, he’s figured out what happened.
“I just had a lot of knuckleheads around me,” he told Jimmy Fallon on the Tonight Show, “and knuckleheads are never good.” But the acknowledgement of his past growing pains and transgressions hasn’t stopped the multitude from tying him to a post and leaving him to burn in the village square. The idea that he was supposed to have everything sorted out and be some kind of angel at twenty is appalling. Particularly older generations who most definitely participated in similar shenanigans on a smaller scale.
The Up-and-Coming’s have not found away to evade the constant scrutiny either. Australian pop/punk band 5 Seconds of Summer, though very active on social media, find that it can be too much at times.
“People our age, we all feel like sh*t about ourselves,” drummer Ashton Irwin, 21, admitted to Billboard Magazine, “We wake up and we look at our phones and there are a thousand opinions on who we are — or what we are. It’s destructive.”
Courtesy: Billboard
There may not be an answer for this constant back and forth between artist and populace. But the current generation of young fans seem to have recognized that their favorite singers are people just like them and want the best for them, even if it means not having new music and a tour the following year or coming to their defense when the artist is attacked on social media.