Robyn Rihanna Fenty (born: February 20, 1988) is a Barbadian singer, songwriter, actress, model, and businesswoman currently living in London, England, United Kingdom.
Early life[]
Rihanna was born in Saint Michael, Barbados on February 20, 1988 to Monica Braithwaite and Ronald Fenty. Her mother is an Afro-Guyanese, while her father is a Barbadian of African, Irish, English, and Scottish descent. Rihanna has two brothers, Rorrey and Rajad Fenty, and two half-sisters and a half-brother from her father's side, each born to different mothers from his previous relationships. She was raised in Bridgetown, Barbados and sold clothes with her father at a stall on the street. Her childhood became somewhat of a disjointing tenure due to her father's alcoholism and crack cocaine addiction, which would lead to physically abusing her mother, and Rihanna would try to get in between them to break up the fights.
During her childhood, Rihanna had suffered excruciating headaches, mainly due to the mental pain of her parents' altercations. When she was 14, her parents divorced, and her health improved. She would try to comfort herself by listening to reggae music. She attended Charles F. Broome Memorial Primary School before transferring to Combermere School. She dropped out of school and began to pursue a career in music.
Music career[]
Career beginnings[]
In 2003, Rihanna formed a musical trio with two of her classmates. She later met by American record producer Evan Rogers. Without a name or any recorded material, the girl group managed to land an audition with Rogers. Rihanna went to Rogers's hotel room, where she performed renditions of Destiny's Child's "Emotion" and Mariah Carey's "Hero". Impressed, Rogers scheduled a second meeting with Rihanna's mother present and then invited Rihanna to his hometown in the United States to record some demo tapes that could be sent to record labels. Recordings were intermittent, taking about a year, because she was only able to record during school holidays. "Pon de Replay" and "The Last Time" were two tracks recorded for the demo tape. The same year, Rihanna was signed to Rogers's and Carl Sturken's production company, Syndicated Rhythm Productions.
Music of the Sun[]
After signing with Def Jam Records, Rihanna began development for her first album. Her debut studio album, Music of the Sun, was released on August 29, 2005. The album included 13 tracks. "Pon de Replay" was the first single that spawned from the album, which would become an immediate success. Other singles were "If It's Lovin' that You Want" and a cover of "You Don't Love Me (No, No, No)" originally by Dawn Penn. Jay-Z and his A&R team helped aid the production of the album. The album sold over 2 million copies worldwide.
A Girl Like Me[]
Two months after releasing her first album, Rihanna began development for her next album. Her second studio album, A Girl Like Me, was released on April 10, 2006. The album included 13 tracks. "SOS" became the first single, and was somewhat successful. Other singles were "Unfaithful", "We Ride", and "Break It Off" featuring Sean Paul. With its first week of release, the album sold over 115,000 copies. After selling 1 million copies worldwide, the album was certified platinum. After the album's release, Rihanna went on a national tour for the first time in her career.
VEVO Channel[]
RihannaVEVO is the official VEVO music account operated by the VEVO music company. The account uploads Rihanna's music videos, teasers and behind the scenes of them, lyric and audio music from her, remixes, and live performances.
The channel is currently the fifteenth most subscribed channel on YouTube with over 26 million subscribers. The channel peaked as the fifth most subscribed YouTube channel four different times spanning from 2013 to 2017. She was the most subscribed female and female musician on YouTube as well, having been the most subscribed female musician from 2011 and having been the most subscribed woman on YouTube overall by surpassing YouTuber Jenna Marbles in January 2014 before being surpassed by Taylor Swift's VEVO account on November 3, 2017, a full week after the channel released her successful single, "Ready For It?", a day after the channel released the lyric video for another successful single, "Call It What You Want", and a full week before Taylor's widely successful comeback album, "Reputation" was released generally to the public. She now is the third most subscribed female and female musician, being surpassed by Katy Perry's VEVO channel since then.
Taylor Swift's VEVO channel would reach Rihanna's peak subscriber rank on YouTube shortly afterwards on November 21, 2017, being the third VEVO channel behind OneDirectionVEVO and JustinBieberVEVO to do so, and the second VEVO channel based on a female artist to do so behind Rihanna's. It was only for a brief time period however as the channel she surpassed, elrubiusOMG, surpassed her back on the same day due to uploading his first YouTube video in a week. She would regain the spot four days later but lose it the same day again due to elrubiusOMG uploading a live stream to his channel. The next day, she surpassed elrubiusOMG's channel yet again but was surpassed by YouTube Spotlight on December 10 as the channel's annual popular YouTube Rewind came out on December 6. A week and three days later, elrubiusOMG's channel surpassed hers again but got surpassed by Taylor's VEVO channel for good on January 14, 2018, just 2 days after the channel released her music video for her Reputation single "End Game" featuring Ed Sheeran and Future. On January 18, 2018, TaylorSwiftVEVO surpassed YouTube Spotlight to become the fifth most subscribed YouTube channel again but was surpassed by Ed Sheeran on February 3, 2018 and has since become the eighth most subscribed channel on YouTube.
Her channel may still become the second VEVO channel, behind Justin Bieber's, to exceed her peak subscriber rank in the near future due to it's fast subscriber growth.
However, Rihanna's VEVO channel was the most subscribed VEVO and music channel from 2011 to 2015, being surpassed by OneDirectionVEVO in November 2015. Her VEVO account surpassed the former British boy band in March 2016 but not before being surpassed by Justin Bieber's VEVO account making her have the second most subscribed VEVO and music channel which she held until Taylor Swift and Eminem surpassed her. She holds the record of having the most subscribed VEVO and music channel for the most amount of time.
Her account also was the most viewed VEVO and music channel for the longest amount of time on YouTube, surpassing Justin Bieber's in February 2013 until Bieber surpassing hers in December 2015.
On April 30, 2012, Rihanna's "Where Have You Been" music video became the most viewed VEVO video in 24 hours, having 4.9 million views the first day of it's upload. It however was surpassed by JustinBieberVEVO's "Boyfriend" on May 4, 2012 as the video had well over 5 million views.
The current most viewed VEVO video in 24 hours is also the most viewed YouTube video in 24 hours, which is Taylor Swift's "Look What You Made Me Do" music video which received over 43 million views the day of its upload, August 27, 2017.
However, on March 20, 2014, RihannaVEVO became the most viewed channel on YouTube (though emimusic was the unofficial most viewed channel at the time due to the channel not showing it's statistics then) surpassing Machinima when both channels were around 4.819 billion views, becoming the first and only VEVO channel to do so. Her VEVO channel became the first channel to surpass 5 billion views (after the 2013 view purged and lesser known most viewed channel Universal Music Group first achieved the milestone in August 2009) in late May and held the top position until PewDiePie surpassed her at around 5.2 billion views on July 19 of that year.
Since then, her VEVO account has dropped to the 27th most viewed channel on YouTube and the fourth most viewed VEVO account behind Justin Bieber's, Katy Perry's and Taylor Swift's with over 13 billion views. It is also the 11th most viewed music channel counting current most viewed YouTube channel T-Series, Netd müzik, El Reino Infantil, Canal KondZilla, shakiraVEVO, Ed Sheeran and Spinnin' Records.
Rihanna is the first female artist to receive 1 to 10 billion views on her channel, the first artist to gain 3 to 7 billion video views, and the second to acclaim 8 to 10 billion. On top of that, she has the sixth most subscribed music channel behind T-Series, JustinBieberVEVO, Canal KondZilla Ed Sheeran, and TaylorSwiftVEVO. She is also the most subscribed black person on YouTube and has been since 2011. While being a celebrity and her account being owned by a company, she is not a YouTuber however, meaning the most subscribed Black YouTuber is British born YouTuber KSI with only 18 million subscribers.
Her channel doesn't usually upload unless she has a new teaser, behind the scenes video of an upcoming music video, an actual music video, lyric or audio video, remix, or live performance which VEVO finds appropriate to upload. It grows the fastest if she makes a new music video whether it features another artist or not, similar to most VEVO channels on YouTube. She currently gets around 100,000 new subscribers a month which is one of the average growth rates for a channel exceeding millions of subscribers and gets around 100 million videos views a month which is one of the highest video views rates on YouTube.
As of November 17, 2017, Rihanna has the most VEVO Certified awards, awards given to VEVO artists who has their videos exceeding 100 million views with 29, one more ahead the second record held by Taylor Swift.
On March 25, 2018, Rihanna's personal channel surged ahead of her VEVO account because YouTube added her VEVO channel subscribers to her personal channel. Her personal channel now boasts over 29 million subscribers, and is growing faster than her VEVO account. Due to the YouTube artificially-generated subscriber inflation, it is not on the official most subscribed list as the list only pertains to sole YouTube channels who gained all of their subscribers genuinely. Since that date, her Vevo channel has been losing subscribers and recently, YouTube dedicated the ability for a user to subscribe to the channel.
Discography[]
- Music of the Sun (2005)
- A Girl Like Me (2006)
- Good Girl Gone Bad (2007)
- Rated R (2009)
- Loud (2010)
- Talk That Talk (2011)
- Unapologetic (2012)
- Anti (2016)
Filmography[]
- Bring It On: All or Nothing (2006)
- Battleship (2012)
- This Is the End (2013)
- Home (2015)
- Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017)
- Ocean's 8 (2018)
- Guava Island (2019)
Tours[]
As a headliner[]
- Rihanna: Live in Concert (2006)
- Good Girl Gone Bad Tour (2007–2009)
- Last Girl on Earth Tour (2010–2011)
- Loud Tour (2011)
- Diamonds World Tour (2013)
- Anti World Tour (2016)
As a co-headliner[]
- The Monster Tour (with Eminem) (2014)
Promotional tours[]
- A Girl's Night Out (2008; a series of charity concerts to benefit the "Believe Foundation")
- 777 Tour (2012; in support of her seventh studio album Unapologetic)
Channel milestones[]
Subscriber milestones[]
- 250,000 subscribers: January 20, 2011
- 500,000 subscribers: March 18, 2011
- 750,000 subscribers: May 11, 2011
- 1 million subscribers: July 9, 2011
- 2 million subscribers: December 22, 2011
- 3 million subscribers: October 27, 2012
- 4 million subscribers: December 21, 2012
- 5 million subscribers: January 29, 2013
- 6 million subscribers: February 14, 2013
- 7 million subscribers: March 10, 2013
- 8 million subscribers: May 6, 2013
- 9 million subscribers: July 1, 2013
- 10 million subscribers: September 10, 2013
- 11 million subscribers: November 15, 2013
- 12 million subscribers: January 4, 2014
- 13 million subscribers: February 23, 2014
- 14 million subscribers: June 12, 2014
- 15 million subscribers: November 29, 2014
- 16 million subscribers: April 7, 2015
- 17 million subscribers: July 17, 2015
- 18 million subscribers: December 3, 2015
- 19 million subscribers: February 25, 2016
- 20 million subscribers: April 1, 2016
- 21 million subscribers: May 13, 2016
- 22 million subscribers: July 10, 2016
- 23 million subscribers: September 21, 2016
- 24 million subscribers: January 31, 2017
- 25 million subscribers: July 5, 2017
- 26 million subscribers: November 21, 2017
- 27-28 million subscribers: March 25, 2018
- 29 million subscribers: March 30, 2018
- 30 million subscribers: July 13, 2018
- 31 million subscribers: December 10, 2018
- 32 million subscribers: May 24, 2019
- 33 million subscribers: October 6, 2019
- 34 million subscribers: March 31, 2020
- 35 million subscribers: August 6, 2020
- 36 million subscribers: December 11, 2020
- 37 million subscribers: April 8, 2021
- 38 million subscribers: September 21, 2021
- 39 million subscribers: April 4, 2022
- 40 million subscribers: October 28, 2022
- 41 million subscribers: February 7, 2023
- 42 million subscribers: July 31, 2023
Video view milestones[]
- 1 billion views: February 27, 2011
- 2 billion views: January 2, 2012
- 3 billion views: November 20, 2012
- 4 billion views: September 2, 2013
- 5 billion views: May 15, 2014
- 6 billion views: February 25, 2015
- 7 billion views: August 13, 2015
- 8 billion views: February 21, 2016
- 9 billion views: May 25, 2016
- 10 billion views: September 20, 2016
- 11 billion views: March 27, 2017
- 12 billion views: November 1, 2017
- 13 billion views: August 10, 2018
- 14 billion views: May 25, 2019
- 15 billion views: March 24, 2020
- 16 billion views: December 18, 2020
- 17 billion views: March 3, 2021
- 18 billion views: July 5, 2021
- 19 billion views: January 21, 2022
- 20 billion views: July 22, 2022
- 21 billion views: December 24, 2022
- 22 billion views: April 28, 2023
