Another day, another magazine cover for Rihanna (aka, another opportunity to show some skin). But this time the sexpot has been crowned GQ’s “Obession of The Year” as they rap up 2012 with their annual “Men Of The Year” December issue. She graces one of the many sought after covers. She does so in a cropped leather jacket by All Saints and…that’s about it. But if you’re used to all the nudity and want to know what homegirl had to say inside the pages, we’ve got you covered.
Her interview, which was done in NYC at Emilio’s Ballato, her penthouse suite at Hotel Gansevoort (where The-Dream showed up to make music with her), and the famous nightclub, Griffin, where she ran into Chris Brown coincidentally (which is documented in the article) was definitely entertaining yet concise, and she cleared up a few things in it.
“That comes from my culture,” she says with her Bajan steel-drum accent. “That’s just the way it’s always been, and I think that for people, especially in America, they make it like the forbidden fruit, but that only makes kids more curious.” When Rihanna was starting out, after being discovered by a vacationing music producer in Barbados, she didn’t realize she was doing anything other than what she had grown up doing in the dance halls. “I was a lot more naive about the way I moved and the way I was being perceived. The more you hear people talk about ‘Oh, you’re a sex symbol,’ it just makes you think, ‘Why are you saying that?’ And I figured it out.”
“I like to feel like a woman,” she says. “I have to be in control in every other aspect of my life, so I feel like in a relationship, like I wanted to be able to take a step back and have somebody else take the lead.” Do you ever switch things up? I ask. “I could absolutely be dominant,” she answers. “But, in general, I’d rather… How do I say this in like a…nonX-rated version?” Right. Lastly, any boundaries I should know about? “Love makes you go places you probably wouldn’t ever go, had it not been for love. But I think everybody still has their limits.”
“I want to make music that’s hopeful, uplifting. Nothing corny or supersentimental,” she told me. “I just want it to have the feeling that brings you out of whatever you’re going through. I want it to spark that fire. I want it to be real, authentic, and raw.”
