Robyn Rihanna Fenty (born February 20, 1988), professionally known by her m… Read Full Bio ↴Robyn Rihanna Fenty (born February 20, 1988), professionally known by her middle name, Rihanna, is a Barbadian singer, songwriter, actress, businesswoman, entrepreneur and fashion designer.

She has attained fourteen Billboard Hot 100 number ones thus far and is the second Barbadian artist to win a Grammy Award. She is also a cultural ambassador for Barbados. In 2021 Rihanna was named a "National Hero" in her home country, earning her the title "The Right Excellent."

Rihanna was born in Saint Michael, Barbados to Ronald Fenty, a warehouse supervisor, and Monica Fenty, an accountant. Her mother, a native of Guyana, is Afro-Guyanese and her father is Bajan and Irish. She is the oldest of three siblings; two younger brothers, Rorrey and Rajad Fenty. She began singing at around the age of seven. Her childhood was deeply affected by her father's addiction to crack cocaine and parent's rocky marriage, which ended when she was fourteen years old. Rihanna attended Charles F. Broome Memorial School, a primary school in Barbados, and then the Combermere School, where she formed a musical trio with two of her classmates at the age of fifteen. In 2004 she won the Miss Combermere Beauty Pageant. She was an army cadet in a sub-military programme that trained with the military of Barbados and Shontelle was her drill sergeant.

At the age of 15, she formed a girl group with two of her classmates. In 2003, friends introduced Rihanna and her two bandmates to record producer Evan Rogers, who was vacationing in Barbados with his wife. The group auditioned for Rogers, who said that "the minute Rihanna walked into the room, it was like the other two girls didn't exist." While auditioning for Rogers, Rihanna sang Destiny's Child's cover of "Emotion". Over the next year, Rihanna and her mom shuttled back and forth to Rogers home in Stamford, Connecticut. Then, shortly after turning 16, she relocated in the United States and moved in with Rogers and his wife. Carl Sturken helped Rihanna record a four-song demo, which included the ballad "The Last Time," a cover of Whitney Houston’s hit "For the Love of You" and what would become her first hit, "Pon de Replay" to send to various recording companies. It took a year to record the demos, because she was going to school and would only record during summer and Christmas school breaks. Rihanna's demo made its way to Def Jam, which invited her to audition for the label's then-president, Jay-Z, who quickly signed her.

Rihanna broke into the recording industry in 2005 with the release of her debut album Music of the Sun, which features the number 2 hit single "Pon de Replay". Less than a year later, Rihanna released album artist=Rihanna]A Girl Like Me and earned her first number-one single, "SOS, which sampled the popular 80s track "Tainted Love". "Unfaithful" was also released and was fairly successful.

Rihanna released her third album Good Girl Gone Bad in June 2007. Prior to the release of the album, she spent the week of the Grammys writing songs for the album with Ne-Yo. She adopted a more sexual image while recording the album, eventually dying her hair black and cutting it short. Rihanna worked with Timbaland and Christopher "Tricky" Stewart, as well as previous musical collaborators such as Stargate, Carl Sturken and Evan Rogers to re-imagine her album compositions with uptempo dance tracks. Rihanna commented, "I want to keep people dancing but still be soulful at the same time. You feel different every album, and [at] this stage I feel like I want to do a lot of uptempo [songs]."

The album topped the charts in countries like the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, Brazil, Russia and Ireland, and peaked at number two in the United States and Australia. Unlike previous work, the album featured a more dance-pop sound instead of the dancehall, reggae and ballad styles. The album received positive reviews by critics, becoming her most critically acclaimed album at that time compared to her previous efforts.

It yielded eight hit singles - "Umbrella" "Shut Up and Drive", "Don't Stop The Music" "Hate That I Love You" "Rehab" "Disturbia" "Take A Bow" "If I Never See Your Face Again" - all singles reaching the top twenty on the Billboard Hot 100 — including the worldwide number-one hit "Umbrella," featuring Jay-Z.

In addition to reaching number one in various countries, "Umbrella" was the number one single in the United Kingdom for ten consecutive weeks, making it the longest-running number-one single since Wet Wet Wet's single "Love Is All Around" spent fifteen weeks at the top in 1994. The song is listed number three on the 100 Best Songs of 2007 published by Rolling Stone magazine. In 2008, "Umbrella" earned Rihanna and Jay-Z a Grammy Award for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration in addition to receiving nominations for Record of the Year and Song of the Year. It managed to stay at number one in the United Kingdom for 10 weeks, the longest time spent by a female and in the 21st century, on this chart.

"Umbrella" has also been recognised in various forms of accolades by the music press. The song is listed number three on the 100 Best Songs of 2007, published by the music magazine Rolling Stone. Time magazine also listed the song number three on their Top 10 Songs of 2007. The song is listed number one on Entertainment Weekly magazine's list of the 10 Best Singles of 2007, while topping the magazine's poll for the best single of 2007. Blender magazine awarded the song Song of the Year in their Readers' Poll 2007. The music press has considered "Umbrella" as 2007's Song of the Summer, while The New York Times writer Kelefa Sanneh regarded it as "arguably 2007's signature slow jam".

In August 2009, Rihanna collaborated with Jay-Z and Kanye West on "Run This Town." The song peaked at number two on Billboard Hot 100 and also reached the top ten in five other countries. She appeared on the cover of Vogue Italia for the September 2009 Issue. The shoot was influenced by Rihanna's hair, which she had cut for the shoot into a mohawk-like style. The style of the shoot was Extreme Couture and very dark, and in one shot she appeared semi-nude. Rihanna performed "Run This Town" along with Jay-Z and West for the "Answer the Call" concert at Madison Square Garden in September 2009, making it her first musical performance since the altercation with Brown. The trio also performed "Run This Town," on the premiere of The Jay Leno Show on September 14, 2009.

In November of 2009, Rated R was released in the wake of a physical altercation with romantic interest Chris Brown, who pled guilty to felony assault. The album's lead single, "Russian Roulette" -- written with Ne-Yo - was one of the year's most controversial singles. The album also includes collaborations with Tricky, The-Dream, Stargate, and SRP.

One year later, Rihanna released her fifth studio album called Loud. It's lead single, "Only Girl (In the World)", reached number one in more than ten countries. The song also won a Grammy Award for Best Dance Recording.

Talk That Talk was released one year after Loud. With the song "We Found Love", Rihanna became the fastest solo artist in the chart's history to achieve twenty Hot 100 top-ten singles, breaking the previous record set by Madonna. The song later became her eleventh number-one single on the Billboard Hot 100. "You Da One" became the second single from the album but was not as successful as "We Found Love". The third single from the album, "Talk That Talk" featuring Jay-Z, was announced on Rihanna's Twitter. The fourth single, "Where Have You Been", peaked at number five on the Billboard Hot 100.

On February 20, 2012, Rihanna and Chris Brown released 2 remixes, one featuring the "Talk That Talk" album track "Birthday Cake" and the other featuring Chris Brown's "Turn Up The Music"

In April 2012, the singer appeared in the movie "Battleship", which is based on the game of the same name.

Rihanna's seventh album Unapologetic was released on November 19, 2012; it was preceded by the lead single Diamonds, which reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 becoming Rihanna's twelfth number one single on the chart and tying her with Madonna and The Supremes for the fourth-most number ones in the chart's history.

On January 28, 2016, Rihanna released her eighth studio album ANTI exclusively through streaming service Tidal. The album peaked at number one on the US Billboard 200, becoming Rihanna's second number one and eighth top ten album on the chart. The album was supported by the release of four singles including the lead single "Work" featuring Drake, which topped the Billboard Hot 100. Further platinum singles "Needed Me" and "Love on the Brain" both peaked inside the top ten of the Hot 100. In 2016, Rihanna was featured on several singles. The first collaboration was Calvin Harris' "This Is What You Came For," which reached number three on the Billboard Hot 100 and number two in the United Kingdom. Rihanna was also featured on Drake's "Too Good" from his album Views and Mike Will Made It's single, "Nothing Is Promised". On June 27, 2016, Rihanna released "Sledgehammer", the lead single from the Star Trek Beyond soundtrack. On August 28, Rihanna was honored with the MTV Video Vanguard Award at the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards. Rihanna was elected artist of the decade of 2010 by Pitchfork, Insider, Lofficiel among other major music magazines.

In October 2022, Rihanna released "Lift Me Up" from the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, marking her first solo single since 2016's "Love On The Brain". It reached #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #3 in the UK. The song was nominated for a Golden Globe and Academy Award, making it Rihanna's first nomination in both awards. On February 12, 2023, she performed at the Apple Music Super Bowl Halftime Show, marking her first performance since the 2018 Grammy Awards. Her Halftime show became the second most watched Halftime show of all time with 118.7 million viewers, just after Lady Gaga’s (117.5 million), but behind Katy Perry’s (121 million).

Love the Way You Lie Part II
Rihanna Lyrics

Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴

On the first page of our story
The future seemed so bright
Then this thing turned out so evil
I don't know why I'm still surprised
Even angels have their wicked schemes
And you take that to new extremes
But you'll always be my hero
Even though you've lost your mind

[Chorus]
Just gonna stand there and watch me burn
But that's all right because I like the way it hurts
Just gonna stand there and hear me cry
But that's all right because I love the way you lie
I love the way you lie
Oh, I love the way you lie

Now there's gravel in our voices
Glass is shattered from the fight
In this tug of war, you'll always win
Even when I'm right
'Cause you feed me fables from your hand
With violent words and empty threats
And it's sick that all these battles
Are what keeps me satisfied

[Chorus]

So maybe I'm a masochist
I try to run but I don't wanna ever leave
Til the walls are goin' up
In smoke with all our memories

This morning, you wake, a sun ray hits your face
Smeared makeup as we lay in the wake of destruction
Hush baby, speak softly, tell me I'll be sorry
That you pushed me into the coffee table last night
So I can push you off me
Try and touch me so I can scream at you not to touch me
Run out the room and I'll follow you like a lost puppy
Baby, without you, I'm nothing, I'm so lost, hug me
Then tell me how ugly I am, but that you'll always love me
Then after that, shove me, in the aftermath of the
Destructive path that we're on, two psychopaths but we
Know that no matter how many knives we put in each other's backs
That we'll have each others backs, 'cause we're that lucky
Together, we move mountains, let's not make mountains out of molehills,
You hit me twice, yeah, but who's countin'?
I may have hit you three times, I'm startin' to lose count
But together, we'll live forever, we found the youth fountain
Our love is crazy, we're nuts, but I refused counselin'
This house is too huge, if you move out I'll burn all two thousand
Square feet of it to the ground, ain't shit you can do about it
With you I'm in my fuckin' mind, without you, I'm out it

Just gonna stand there and watch me burn
But that's all right because I like the way it hurts
Just gonna stand there and hear me cry
But that's all right because I love the way you lie
I love the way you lie
Love the way you lie

Love the way you lie
Love the way you lie

Overall Meaning

In the song "Love the Way You Lie Part II" by Rihanna, the lyrics are from the perspective of a woman who is in a toxic and abusive relationship, but despite everything, she still loves her partner. The opening lines suggest that at one point, the couple was happy and had a bright future, but something went wrong, leading to their current situation. The main message of the song seems to be that love and pain are intertwined, and even though the woman is experiencing suffering, she is still drawn to her abuser.

Throughout the song, the lyrics describe the ups and downs of the couple's relationship, where the man is portrayed as manipulative, controlling, and violent, while the woman is portrayed as helpless and hopelessly devoted to her partner. The chorus repeats the idea that the woman loves the way her partner lies and how the pain he causes makes her feel alive.

The final verse shows a moment of clarity for the woman, where she acknowledges the reality of the abuse and how unhealthy the relationship is, but she still can't bring herself to leave. The song is a powerful depiction of the cycle of abuse and the complicated feelings that come along with it.

Line by Line Meaning

On the first page of our story
At the beginning of our relationship

The future seemed so bright
We were optimistic about our future together

Then this thing turned out so evil
But things took a dark turn

I don't know why I'm still surprised
Though I should have seen it coming

Even angels have their wicked schemes
Even good people can be manipulative and deceitful

And you take that to new extremes
You've taken deception to new levels

But you'll always be my hero
Despite it all, I still admire and love you

Even though you've lost your mind
Even though you've become irrational and unstable

Just gonna stand there and watch me burn
You're content to watch me suffer

But that's all right because I like the way it hurts
I've become accustomed to the pain and almost enjoy it

Just gonna stand there and hear me cry
You're unmoved by my tears and emotional distress

But that's all right because I love the way you lie
I stay with you because I love your deceptive ways

Now there's gravel in our voices
Our communication has become rough and abrasive

Glass is shattered from the fight
The fights have become violent and destructive

In this tug of war, you'll always win
Our disagreements always end in your victory

Even when I'm right
Even when I have a valid point

'Cause you feed me fables from your hand
You manipulate me with lies

With violent words and empty threats
You use aggression and intimidation to maintain control

And it's sick that all these battles
It's concerning that we find satisfaction in fighting

Are what keeps me satisfied
But it's the reality of our dysfunctional relationship

So maybe I'm a masochist
Perhaps I derive pleasure from pain and suffering

I try to run but I don't wanna ever leave
Though I've considered leaving, I'm still attached

Til the walls are goin' up
Until our relationship has completely crumbled

In smoke with all our memories
Leaving behind nothing but ashes with our memories

Hush baby, speak softly, tell me I'll be sorry
You pacify me with sweet words and apologies

That you pushed me into the coffee table last night
Trying to make amends for a recent violent outburst

So I can push you off me
But I still feel angry and resentful

Try and touch me so I can scream at you not to touch me
I'm still angry and don't want your physical affection

Run out the room and I'll follow you like a lost puppy
But I can't bear to let you go and will always come back to you

Baby, without you, I'm nothing, I'm so lost, hug me
I'm so dependent on you that I feel worthless without you

Then tell me how ugly I am, but that you'll always love me
Even if you insult me, I'll still accept your love

Then after that, shove me, in the aftermath of the
But then you'll resort to violence again, and the cycle continues

Destructive path that we're on, two psychopaths but we
We're both destructive and dysfunctional in our own ways

Know that no matter how many knives we put in each other's backs
Despite all the hurtful things we do to each other

That we'll have each others backs, 'cause we're that lucky
We'll still support and defend each other, as messed up as it is

Together, we move mountains, let's not make mountains out of molehills,
When we work together, we can accomplish great things, so let's not waste our energy on small things

You hit me twice, yeah, but who's countin'?
I can't even keep track of how many times you've physically hurt me

I may have hit you three times, I'm startin' to lose count
But I'm not innocent either, I've also been violent towards you

But together, we'll live forever, we found the youth fountain
We believe that our relationship will last and keep us young forever

Our love is crazy, we're nuts, but I refused counselin'
We're aware of how crazy our relationship is, but we refuse to seek help or therapy

This house is too huge, if you move out I'll burn all two thousand
If you ever leave me or try to leave, I'll destroy everything we have

Square feet of it to the ground, ain't shit you can do about it
I'm willing to cause destruction just to keep you with me

With you I'm in my fuckin' mind, without you, I'm out it
Being with you drives me insane, but being without you is even worse

Love the way you lie
I know we're living in a cycle of lies, but I still love you anyway

Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
Written by: ALEXANDER JUNIOR GRANT, HOLLY HAFERMANN, MARSHALL B. III MATHERS

Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind

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