A daily briefing on what matters in the music industry Jan. 26, Rocky scored his first Billboard 200 No. 1 album in more than a decade with Don’t Be Dumb, which Rihanna celebrated via X, writing, “Just me here to let yall know my baby daddy got the NUMBER 1 ALBUM!!! While some fans are wallowing in their 10th year without a new Rihanna album, everyone’s favorite Bajan Bad Gal is celebrating the massive success her ANTI album has generated during that period. This is the second such soundtrack she has contributed to for an animated movie, recording several anthems for “Home,” a 2015 film she starred in alongside the “Big Bang Theory” star Jim Parsons.
While the world is still anticipating her ninth studio album, Rihanna — now a mom of two boys — continues to make her own rules and move at her own pace. With the glorious “Lift Me Up,” she found herself in the top 10 for the first time since 2017’s “Wild Thoughts.” Ever since ANTI, Rihanna’s devoted fanbase has been begging for a new album, with Rih playfully trolling them with responses like “I lost it” and Instagram captions that read, “Me listening to R9 by myself and refusing to release it.” Accolades aside, ANTI is proof that magic happens when an artist of Rihanna’s caliber follows their own instincts in pursuit of creating a body of work — one that can outlast them and continue to inspire generations to come. For instance, “Sex with Me” is featured on the deluxe edition as a bonus track, but managed to crack the Hot 100 at No. 83 and reach No. 8 on the R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart. Elsewhere on ANTI, Rihanna drunk dials an ex (“Higher”), compares smoking weed to her lover (“James Joint”), and chastises a guy for getting emotionally attached after their fling (“Needed Me”).

An Unapologetic Queen

• This pivotal move allowed her to focus on honing her vocal talents and recording a demo album that would ultimately pave the way for her music career.
• “Wood” and “Honey” capture the playfulness of true love, while songs like “WI$HLI$T” and “Elizabeth Taylor” see love not as a distraction from her life’s work but as the very thing that makes it feel meaningful.
• While her songwriting has developed and matured, feeling like an outsider and carving her own path is a theme she still writes about now, as seen on Midnights’ “You’re On Your Own, Kid.”
• It’s apt that she would turn to Max Martin and Shellback, her 1989 and reputation collaborators, to bring that same captivating pop soundscape to The Life of a Showgirl and to capture some of the energy Swift was experiencing.
• Rihanna became the youngest and fastest solo artist in Billboard Hot 100 history to accumulate ten number-one singles.
• Her longing continues in “Where Have You Been,” which flaunts Rihanna’s versatility, flipping Geoff Mack’s 1959 country song “I’ve Been Everywhere” into an infectious EDM banger.

Redefining its titular term, the four-week chart-topper finds the husky-voiced T-Boz freely admitting to straying from an unaffectionate relationship, proving that the playa anthem wasn’t solely the reserve of their male counterparts. But the song itself did pip fellow superstars Prince, Billy Joel and Lionel Richie to the Best Male Pop Vocal Performance crown. Backed by some fast and furious fiddles, “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” tells the tale of a young musician named Johnny who bumps into Beelzebub himself during a jam session in the Peach State.

Rihanna and A$AP snuggle up leaving Cannes carpet

Its second single, “If It’s Lovin’ That You Want”, peaked at number 36 in the US. After Rihanna signed with Def Jam, Jay-Z and his team spent three months completing her debut studio album. She waited in Jay-Z’s office while lawyers finalized a six-album contract with Def Jam. In early 2005, she performed in New York City for Jay-Z and music executive Antonio “L.A.” Reid, singing Whitney Houston’s “For the Love of You” along with demo tracks “Pon de Replay” and “The Last Time”.
The dance-pop and R&B heavy record, which debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 chart, featured several hit songs, including the singles “Don’t Stop the Music,” “Shut Up and Drive,” and “Hate That I Love You” with Ne-Yo. With its follow-up, “Our Song” — which spent six consecutive weeks on the top of Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart — she became the youngest person to solely write and sing a No. 1 country single; she also became the first female solo artist in country music to write or co-write every song on an album. With the dance-pop set Loud (2010), she reflected on the fun she had while recording the album, incorporating ballads, party anthems, and empowering love songs.
Highly regarded as Swift’s magnum opus, Red sees the singer shed the fairytale dresses and the girl-next-door persona to craft a body of work that has now been deemed as her first “adult” record. Writing the entire album herself, Swift used Speak Now to prove her songwriting prowess to those who questioned her capabilities. For the first time since becoming an artist, she was forced to reckon with the concept of celebrity and how turning into one — whether she wanted it or not — informed her own writing and perception of herself. On the album’s liner notes, Swift says Fearless is about “living in spite” of the things that scare you, like falling in love again despite being hurt before or walking away and letting go.

• She recorded the early dancehall anthem in 1982 when she was just 20 years old as a last-minute addition to her debut album, One, Two.
• Swift’s now-frequent collaborator Jack Antonoff credits her as the first person to take a chance on him as a producer with “I Wish You Would” and “Out Of The Woods”; both tracks exemplified how future Antonoff-produced songs would sound on albums like reputation, Lover and Midnights.
• On the album’s liner notes, Swift says Fearless is about “living in spite” of the things that scare you, like falling in love again despite being hurt before or walking away and letting go.
• Even as a new country artist, critics claimed that she “mastered” the genre while subsequently ushering it to a new era — one that would soon see Swift dabble in country-pop.
• One writer in particular, Liz Rose, applauded Swift’s songwriting capabilities, stating that she was more of an “editor” for the songs because Swift already had such a distinct vision.
• “I used to kind of have this dark fear that if I ever were truly happy and free being myself and nurtured by a relationship, what happens if the writing just dries up? What if writing is directly tied to my torment and pain?” she said ahead of the album’s release.

An interpolation of Toots and the Maytals’ 1966 song of the same name, Sister Nancy’s in-studio freestyle was laid over sparse rub-a-dub production, allowing her declaration of ambition and skill to ring loud and clear. In addition to her status as a rare female voice in a sea of male performers at the dawn of dancehall, Sister Nancy is recognized for her influential, highly sampled single “Bam Bam.” While Sister Nancy needn’t be reminded of her influence — “I’m the woman who created dancehall … on the mic system, around the sound system. I’m the one who did all of that, first” — the past 15 years have seen the artist receive her flowers on a global stage. “I will never be your ordinary thing. When you come to see me, it doesn’t matter the time or the space, it’s always going to be good.” “People love what I stand for. I always give the audience something they can think about,” Sister Nancy tells GRAMMY.com, Zooming in from a car in Midtown Manhattan.
Rihanna’s first studio album, Music of the Sun, was released in August 2005 to much intrigue. Her last No. 1 single, “Work” featuring Drake, topped the chart for nine weeks. Her first No. 1 song, “SOS,” topped the chart for three weeks in 2006, while her Grammy-winning Jay-Z collaboration “Umbrella” far surpassed that the following year, maintaining the lead spot for seven weeks.
Swift also found a new sense of creativity within this new mindset, one where she aimed to still embed playful themes in her songwriting but with less snark than that of “Blank Space” and “Look What You Made Me Do.” Leaning into Lover being a “love letter to love,” Swift explored every aspect of it. After finding love amongst chaos with reputation, Swift was learning to deal with the anxiety and fear of losing her partner — became a major theme of another aptly titled album, Lover. With time, though, it became clear that the response to reputation became muddled with the public’s overall perception of her at the time — some even claimed that Swift was ahead of her time with the album’s overall sound. Although Swift said that the album has its vindictive moments — even declaring that the “old Taylor” is dead on the bridge of “Look What You Made Me Do” — it’s a vulnerable record for her. Following the release of 1989, Swift became a cultural juggernaut, and the album has had an omnipresence in music since. And where some might trade a hit or two at the expense of their artistic integrity, Swift didn’t falter — instead, her lyrics were just as heartfelt and intimate as they were on prior albums.

Anti

The album’s first half features strong 1980s pop influences, while the second half leans more toward traditional R&B. Rihanna’s music is primarily R&B and pop singer, and incorporates elements of various genres like dancehall, EDM, and adult contemporary. Rihanna became the first person to headline a Super Bowl halftime show while pregnant, revealing her pregnancy during the performance. The Super Bowl performance earned Rihanna five Primetime Emmy Award nominations, including one for Outstanding Variety Special (Live). In August, she was honoured with the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award at the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards, where she performed a series of medleys of her most successful songs. The album was released exclusively on the streaming service Tidal on January 28, 2016.
Seven years into an already extraordinary career, 2012’s Unapologetic became Rihanna’s first album to debut at No. 1 on the all-genre Billboard 200 chart. With this feat, she became the youngest artist to attain the most chart-toppers in a five-year span. That same carefree spirit can be heard in the feminist track “Raining Men,” which features Nicki Minaj — their first of two collabs, as they joined forces again for “Fly,” the final single off the rapper’s iconic Pink Friday album. While “What’s My Name?” may not outshine Rih and Drizzy’s other collabs — including 2011’s “Take Care” or 2016’s “Work” — the second she sings, “Hey, boy, I really wanna see if you can go downtown with a girl like me,” it’s impossible not to whine your waist to the riddim. Through lead single “Russian Roulette” and bitingly catchy anthems “Stupid in Love,” “Fire Bomb,” “Photographs,” “Cold Case Love,” and “The Last Song,” Rihanna explored her angst and confusion. Rihanna was a familiar face by 2007, but with the arrival of her third studio album, Good Girl Gone Bad, she graduated from cookie-cutter pop star to bonafide icon.
In 2014, Shakira featured Rihanna on her single “Can’t Remember to Forget You”. In December 2013, she topped both the Billboard Hot 100 and UK Singles Chart with a feature on Eminem’s song “The Monster”. Rihanna made a cameo in the comedy film This Is the End (2013), and later collaborated with rapper Wale on his remix of the single “Bad”. To promote the album, Rihanna embarked on the 777 Tour, performing seven shows in seven countries over the course of seven days. In September 2012, the music video for “We Found Love” won Video of the Year at the MTV Video Music Awards, making Rihanna the first woman to receive the honour more than once. In March, Rihanna and Brown released two remixes—her track “Birthday Cake” and his “Turn Up the Music”—which were criticized due to their history of domestic violence.

Acting Career and Appearances

The line debuted in a Paris pop-up on May 22 before a worldwide online release seven days later, featuring clothing, accessories, and footwear. It included an array of products including foundations, highlighters, bronzers, blush compacts, lip glosses, and blotting sheets, and was praised for offering shades that catered to all skin tones. The $10 million partnership produced a wide range of beauty products, with the first collection released on September 8, 2017, in stores and online across more than 150 countries. Over the next two years, she released a variety of footwear in different styles and colourways, all receiving positive responses from critics and consumers alike. Rihanna went on to collaborate with numerous fashion houses, including Dior, Stance, and Manolo Blahnik. She also established a photography agency, A Dog Ate My Homework, representing photographers Erik Asla and Deborah Anderson.
She first gained prominence in 2005 with her debut album “Music of the Sun,” which quickly established her as a force in the music industry. Known for her unique style and chart-topping hits, she has influenced music and fashion worldwide. She told Winfrey that Brown may have been the love of her life and she has developed “a very close friendship” with him. The pair worked together on the song “Birthday Cake,” released that year.

Rihanna is expecting baby No. 3 with A$AP Rocky, the rapper confirms at the 2025 Met Gala

In turn, Swift hasn’t just become one of the biggest artists of all time — she’s changed pop music altogether. Since then, she’s released 12 studio albums, re-recorded four as “Taylor’s Version,” and cultivated one of the most feverish fan bases in music. Furthermore, the deluxe edition consists of 16 tracks, half of which topped the Dance Club Songs chart — smashing the record (previously held by Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream) for the most No. 1s from a single album. “Same Ol’ Mistakes” is a cover of psychedelic rock band Tame Impala’s “New Person, Same Old Mistakes” — her first time remaking another artist’s song for her own album since “You Don’t Love Me (No, No, No)” on Music of the Sun. The album feels like one big celebration of life, as evidenced by Rihanna’s fire-engine red hair and No. 1 singles “Only Girl (In the World)” and “What’s My Name?” (the latter of which was Rih’s first collaboration with Drake). Despite being Good Girl Gone Bad’s lowest-charting single, Timberlake heralded the song as “the bridge for her to be accepted as an adult in the music industry.”

Although Jay-Z initially thought “Pon de Replay” was too big for a new artist, he invited her to audition. Rihanna’s demo was sent to rapper Jay-Z, who had just become the president and CEO of the record label Def Jam Recordings. In 2005, she became the first artist to sign with Syndicated Rhythm Productions, betista casino the production company founded by Rogers and Carl Sturken. Unnamed and without original material, the girl group auditioned for American producer Evan Rogers, who recalled that “the minute Rihanna walked into the room, it was like the other two girls didn’t exist”. Though she initially planned to finish high school, she ultimately dropped out at age 16 to pursue a music career. Signed to Def Jam Recordings, she debuted with the Caribbean-inspired records Music of the Sun (2005) and A Girl Like Me (2006), both of which reached the top ten of the US Billboard 200.
The record also featured the popular power ballad “Unfaithful,” as well as singles “We Ride” and “Break It Off.” The album debuted at No. 5 on the Billboard 200 chart and earned her first No. 1 hit with the catchy pop single “SOS,” which spent three weeks atop Billboard’s Hot 100. In 2008, Rihanna topped the chart three times, twice with her own songs “Disturbia” and “Take a Bow,” plus a feature on T.I.’s “Live Your Life.” She has also earned nine number-one songs on the UK Singles Chart and ranks second to the Beatles for the most million-selling singles in the country. This made her the artist with the most digital single awards and the first performer to exceed RIAA’s 100 million cumulative singles certification threshold. With estimated worldwide sales exceeding 250 million records as of 2023, Rihanna is one of the best-selling music artists of all time.
“SOS” became her first song to reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100, while “Unfaithful” was a top-ten single worldwide. The song was released on May 25, 2005, and became a commercial success, reaching number two on both the US Billboard Hot 100 and the UK Singles Chart. Departing from Def Jam in favour of Jay-Z’s label, Roc Nation, she released the eclectic Anti (2016)—her second number-one album.
In June 2016, Rihanna released “Sledgehammer” as part of the film soundtrack for Star Trek Beyond. Announced in November 2015, the Anti World Tour was launched in March 2016 in support of the album. In late 2015, Rihanna signed a $25 million deal with Samsung to promote its Galaxy product line, with the company also sponsoring the rollout of her eighth studio album, titled Anti, and its accompanying tour.
Oldfield was rewarded for helping to scar a generation of moviegoers for life when a condensed version of his eerie masterpiece picked up the Best Instrumental Composition GRAMMY in 1975. And the soul legend further leaned into its supernatural theme in 2013 when he appeared as a witch doctor in a Bud Light Super Bowl commercial soundtracked by the ominous chart-topper. Along with giving GRAMMY gold to the likes of Smashing Pumpkins, Slayer and Vampire Weekend, the Recording Academy has embraced the odd musical spooktacular in several forms. “I have to appreciate ‘Bam Bam.’ I have no problem talking about it because it’s mine. I did the song, so I’m not tired of talking about it. I’m not tired of playing it either,” Sister Nancy says. “Mad Professor is someone I look up to. He’s a genius, and I love working with him,” Sister Nancy adds. She continues to release new music of her own, though she believes in letting projects simmer before embarking on something new.