Rihanna

Birth name    :  Robyn Rihanna Fenty
Born              :  February 20, 1988
Genres          :  R&B, pop, dancehall, reggae, hip hop, dance
Occupations  :  singer, songwriter, record producer, actress

Personal Life

Robyn Rihanna Fenty born February 20, 1988, known mononymously as Rihanna, is a Barbadian recording artist and actress. Born in Saint Michael, Barbados, Rihanna began her career when she met record producer Evan Rogers in late 2003. At age 16, she came to the United States to pursue a recording career and began recording demo tapes under Rogers' guidance. She subsequently signed a contract with Def Jam Recordings after auditioning for Jay-Z.

Rihanna rose to fame following the release of her debut album Music of the Sun (2005), which peaked in the top ten of the Billboard 200 chart and features the Billboard Hot 100 top five hit single "Pon de Replay". In less than a year, she released her second studio album, A Girl Like Me (2006), which peaked within the top-five in the United States, and produced her first Hot 100 number one single, "SOS". Rihanna's third studio album, Good Girl Gone Bad released in May 2007, spawned the international hit singles "Umbrella", "Don't Stop the Music", "Take a Bow" and "Disturbia", with an additional four singles being released. The album was nominated for nine Grammy Awards, winning Best Rap/Sung Collaboration for "Umbrella". Her fourth studio album Rated R (2009), produced the top-ten singles "Russian Roulette", "Hard" and "Rude Boy", with the latter achieving the number-one spot on the Billboard Hot 100. Loud (2010), Rihanna's fifth studio album, spawned the number-one hits "Only Girl (In the World)", "What's My Name?" and "S&M". Rihanna's sixth studio album, Talk That Talk (2011) served number-one hit "We Found Love" and top-five single "Where Have You Been". Unapologetic, her seventh studio album, is set to be released in November 2012, with "Diamonds" released as the album's lead single.

Rihanna's work has earned her numerous awards and accolades, including five American Music Awards, eighteen Billboard Music Awards, two BRIT Awards and five Grammy Awards. She has achieved a total of eleven number one singles on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, becoming the youngest solo artist to achieve the feat. Billboard named Rihanna the Digital Songs Artist of the 2000s decade, and ranked her as the seventeenth artist of the same decade. She is the highest-selling digital artist in US history, having sold 47,571,000 singles as of 2012. Furthermore, she has also shipped 7.3 million album units in the United States as of September 2011. Some of her singles have earned their place on the list of best-selling singles worldwide. Rihanna has sold more than 25 million albums and 60 million digital singles worldwide since the beginning of her career in 2005, which makes her one of the best selling artists of all time. In June 2011, Forbes reported that Rihanna had earned $29 million between May 2010 and May 2011. In 2012, American magazine Time named Rihanna one of the most influential people in the world and was also ranked the fourth most powerful celebrity in 2012 with earnings of $53 million between May 2011 and May 2012, according to Forbes. Also in 2012, Rihanna was named the top artist of Billboard's Pop Songs Artists of 1992–2012 and the UK's second biggest selling female singles artist of all time with a combined singles sales tally as a lead artist of 11.4 million.

She was born Robyn Rihanna Fenty on February 20, 1988, in Saint Michael, Barbados, to Monica Braithwaite, a retired accountant, and Ronald Fenty, a warehouse supervisor for a garment factory. Her mother, a native of Guyana, is Afro-Guyanese, and her father is of Barbadian and Irish descent. The eldest of three siblings, she has two brothers, Rorrey and Rajad Fenty. She also has two half-sisters and a half-brother from her father's side, each born by different mothers before Rihanna's father married her mother. She grew up listening to reggae music, and began singing at around the age of seven. Her childhood was deeply affected by her father's addiction to crack cocaine, alcohol, and marijuana, and her parents' rocky marriage ended when she was 14, although he remained a part of her life. During her parents' marriage, she suffered from excruciating headaches leading doctors to think she had a brain tumor and underwent several CAT scans from the age of eight until her parents separated. She grew up in a modest three-bed bungalow in Bridgetown and would sell clothes with her dad on a street stall. She 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. She was an army cadet in a sub-military programme that trained with the military of Barbados and Shontelle was her drill sergeant. Although she initially wanted to graduate from high school, she chose to pursue her musical career instead.  In December 2003, Rihanna met American music producer Evan Rogers through a mutual friend who knew Rogers' wife. When Rogers and his Bajan-born wife were in Barbados for the holidays, Rihanna and her two bandmates auditioned for him in his hotel room, who said that "the minute Rihanna walked into the room, it was like the other two girls didn't exist." While auditioning for Rogers, she sang Destiny's Child's cover of "Emotion". Impressed, Rogers set up a second meeting, and, with her mom present, invited her to do some recording and write with him and Carl Sturken at their studio in New York. Shortly after turning 16, she won the Miss Combermere school beauty pageant, as well as her high school talent show with a performance of Mariah Carey's "Hero". Over the next year, Rihanna and her mom shuttled back and forth to Rogers' home in Stamford, Connecticut. With the help of Sturken, she recorded a four-song demo, which included the ballad "Last Time", a cover of Whitney Houston's "For the Love of You", and what would become her first hit, "Pon de Replay". It took a year to record the demos, as Rihanna was still going to school and therefore would only record during her summer and Christmas school breaks.  In January 2005, Rogers began shopping Rihanna's four-song demo to various recording companies. A copy of the demo was sent to Def Jam Recordings, where Jay Brown, an A&R executive, overheard it and played it for the label's then-president, Jay-Z. When he heard "Pon de Replay", Jay-Z was skeptical about Rihanna at first because he felt that the song was too big for her, stating that "when a song is that big, it's hard [for a new artist] to come back from. I don't sign songs, I sign artists". Def Jam was the first label to respond and invited her to audition where she sang "For the Love of You" for Jay-Z and L.A. Reid of Island Def Jam Music Group. She was signed the same day and canceled a set of meetings with other labels. After signing with Def Jam in February 2005, she relocated to the United States and moved in with Rogers and his wife. Although she still thinks of herself as Robyn, she chose her middle name as her stage name because, to her, the name Rihanna is just a stage that started in a recording studio in 2005.