Rihanna might have won the school talent contest as a solo artist, but she felt that she would have more chance of success if she joined forces with two friends. Girl groups were huge at the time – from Destiny’s Child and TLC in the US, to the Sugababes and Girls Aloud in the UK – the music world was loving girl groups.
Rihanna and her unnamed group managed to find out through a friend that a New York music producer called Evan Rogers was holidaying in Barbados with his wife, who is Bajan. He visited family in Barbados every year, and was always on the lookout for talented singers. Rogers asked his associates on the island to tell him if they spotted any potential recording artists and one such friend suggested he allow Rihanna and her friends to audition for him.
Being informed that a music producer wanted to meet her was a massive deal for Rihanna, because she knew she would have one chance to impress him. She had to make sure the girls in her group were well rehearsed, looked good and were vocally ready. They didn’t have much time to prepare: Rogers was on holiday and would soon be flying back to New York.
Evan Rogers remembers the audition as if it was yesterday. He told Kurama magazine: ‘I thought Rihanna was a star from the moment she sang for me. She had a presence when she walked into the room. Her voice was raw but distinctive – and she wanted this career more than anything. I signed her without any hesitation. A true star is obvious to me from the moment they walk into a room. I could never have predicted how huge she would become, but I always believed she was a star from day one.’
During their audition the group sang ‘Emotion’ by Destiny’s Child, but Evan didn’t watch or listen to the other girls, just the shy girl with the beautiful voice. Rihanna might have been lacking in confidence but she impressed him very much. Rihanna was such a great singer that he chose to sign her as a solo artist, because he didn’t think she needed the other girls.
When Evan’s musical partner Carl Sturken heard Rihanna sing for the first time he was just as captivated, and the two producers wanted her to be the first artist on their SRP label. They asked Rihanna to come back a few days later with her mum, so they could discuss things and decide what they needed to do next.
Her two school friends didn’t kick up a fuss and to this day they have remained silent, even though they could have made a lot of money by selling their stories to the press.
Evan Rogers and Carl Sturken are a team of Grammy-nominated producers and songwriters who have been working in the music business for more than 20 years. They were in the same band when they were younger, and would play gigs all over the place. While they were performing in Barbados, both Rogers and Sturken fell in love with Bajan women, married them and decided to become session musicians in New York. Evan got a solo deal and started writing and producing tracks for other artists. Most of the time, Evan came up with the lyrics and Carl would pen the music.
To date they have worked on a series of albums that have sold more than 70 million copies. Over the years they have worked with Rod Stewart, Donny Osmond, Kelly Clarkson, ‘N Sync, Christina Milian, Anastacia, Jessica Simpson and many more big names. In 2005 they decided to create their own record label called SRP – Syndicated Rhythm Productions – and Rihanna was the first artist they signed. They have written and produced many of Rihanna’s biggest hits over the years.
Rihanna knew she would eventually have to move to the US, but she stayed in Barbados for another year. She went to school with her friends, studied and tried to act like a normal schoolgirl, but it was very hard. All she wanted to do was sing, but her mum made sure RiRi kept her feet firmly on the ground.
In the holidays she would fly out to Stamford, Connecticut, with Monica to record her demo in Evan Rogers’ studio. Shortly after she turned 16 she moved out there permanently, leaving her mum and the rest of the family behind in Barbados. Evan welcomed Rihanna into his home and introduced her to his family; she lived with Evan and his wife and family while he and Carl Sturken put the finishing touches to the demo, before sending it out to labels they thought might be interested.
The first label to respond was Def Jam, who simply loved Rihanna’s demo. Other labels were interested in her, but from the beginning it was clear that Def Jam were the keenest. Rihanna was only 16 but they saw that she had huge potential. They wanted to meet her and find out what she was like performing live.
Even though record labels were interested, Rihanna was still nervous – after all, she had to perform well, otherwise she could end up returning to Barbados a failure. Those classmates who had bullied her for being pale would have loved to get the opportunity to tease her about her big dreams being over.
Rihanna might have been 16 and far away from home, but there was no way she was going to mess it up. When she found out that the man she had to impress was Jay-Z she got even more nervous, because she had never met anyone that famous before. He may have liked the demo but she knew any subsequent success depended on her performance.
Rihanna revealed to Singers’ Room magazine: ‘I was in the lobby, shaking! I saw just a little bit of Jay’s face down the hall and I had never met a celebrity, and to meet a celebrity who’s also the president of the label, that was crazy!’
As soon as Jay-Z came to introduce himself and took her into his office, she started to relax, though. She could see that he wanted her to succeed, not fail. Rihanna chose to sing Whitney Houston’s ‘For the Love of You’, ‘Pon de Replay’ and ‘The Last Time’ as these three songs showed off the different styles of music she could do. Jay-Z would already be very familiar with ‘For the Love of You’ but the other two tracks were completely new, having been written especially for Rihanna by Evan Rogers and Carl Sturken.
Jay-Z was joined by Def Jam CEO L.A. Reid; they were both overwhelmed by Rihanna’s talent and wouldn’t let her leave until she signed a contract. When she had finished singing, Jay-Z nodded towards her and said, ‘We’re interested.’
Rihanna will never forget that moment.
The pair didn’t want to let her out of their sight because they knew that she had other meetings planned. In fact, they had their lawyers work on the contract while they waited, and it was finally signed around three in the morning. Rihanna was ecstatic and couldn’t stop smiling as she signed her name. By the time she left it was 4.30am. It had been a long day and night, but she finally knew she was about to fulfil her dreams. She was going to be a worldwide recording artist!
Jay-Z never expected to see her sing at 4pm in the afternoon and to still be in her company in the early hours. It is very unusual to sign an artist this way, and perhaps a bit crazy too. Most people would have slept on it and met up a day or two later, but he didn’t want anyone else stealing her from his label. Jay-Z knew immediately that Rihanna had the potential to be a huge star; he initially believed that ‘Pon de Replay’ might be too big for her, but he liked the way she performed and thought she had an amazing voice.
Jay-Z is a hugely successful rapper and businessman, and was president of Def Jam when Rihanna auditioned. Later, he would step down from the role to concentrate on his own label Roc-A-Fella but would continue to mentor Rihanna. Over the years he has become like a big brother to her and will always try to protect her. Rihanna knew from the beginning that Jay-Z had her best interests at heart, and he was an expert in the music business. In fact, he has sold more than 50 million albums and has 13 Grammy Awards (five of which he had when Rihanna met him for the first time).
L.A. Reid was the CEO of Def Jam at the time of Rihanna’s audition and is an award- winning record executive, producer and songwriter. During his long career he has signed many top artists including Usher, Mariah Carey, Justin Bieber, Pink, Kanye West and Avril Lavigne.
Once Jay-Z and L.A. Reid had signed Rihanna, it took three months to put together her first album before it was released. Music of the Sun came out on 30 August 2005 and ‘Pon de Replay’ was the first single. In the beginning Def Jam wanted fans to see Rihanna as ‘the girl next door’.
Evan Rogers and Carl Sturken were involved in writing and producing many of the tracks chosen for the album. The band J-Status, Canadian rapper Kardinal Offishall, Jamaican singer Vybz Kartel and the musician Elephant Man all contributed as well. Because they had been working with Rihanna for over a year, they already had some of the tracks ready, so that helped to speed up the process.
The album did really well and sold 69,000 copies in the first week, which meant it reached No. 10 in the US charts – a fantastic achievement for any artist, let alone one just starting out. It has continued to sell well, and at the time of writing, more than two million copies have been sold since it was first released.
The album also performed well in the Canadian charts on its release, coming in at No. 7, and reached No. 12 in the Irish charts. It did less well in the UK, reaching No. 35.
Rihanna likened her first album to callaloo, a stew-like meal that is eaten in Barbados, announcing on its release: ‘My music is mostly Caribbean beats mixed with R&B. I don’t want to be pigeonholed into being just a dance artist because I can sing too. I have ballads on the album as well as upbeat tracks.’
She added: ‘Music is in my DNA.’
Rihanna was the one who actually came up with the name of the album, Music of the Sun. She wanted the sun to be in the title because it symbolises Barbados and where she’s come from, as well as herself (the track of the same name was written later on). She didn’t just record songs that people had written for her; Rihanna helped write some tracks, too. She worked on the lyrics for ‘Here I Go Again’, ‘Willing to Wait’, ‘Music of the Sun’ and ‘Now I Know’.
The tracks on the album are as follows:
Fans loved the album but reviews from the critics were mixed. Many thought it was too similar to the music Beyoncé and Ashanti were producing. Slant magazine gave it two-and-a-half stars out of five and said in their review: ‘Music of the Sun gets off to an aptly breezy start with the sunshiny “Here I Go Again” and “If It’s Lovin’ That You Want” (co-produced by Poke & Tone), but while most of the album coasts atop its light Caribbean influence, the middle stretch of the record sinks like a Janet album. The album’s final track, “Now I Know”, is a too-mature, outdated, and string-laden affair for such a young, seemingly “hip” artist. Still, if inconsistency is Music of the Sun’s biggest flaw, Rihanna is doing quite well by today’s paint-by-numbers R&B standards.’
Rolling Stone magazine gave the album the same score and commented: ‘Photogenic Rihanna suggests a young Mariah Carey minus the birdcalls, and the generic vocal hiccups and frills clearly learned from American R&B often overwhelm her Caribbean charm. At 52 minutes, Rihanna’s debut overstays its welcome, but the single (“Pon de Replay”) justifies plenty of replays.’ Rolling Stone went on to describe Rihanna as what ‘Beyoncé might have sounded like if she had grown up in the West Indies and skipped the whole Destiny’s Child thing.’
The album cover art chosen for Music of the Sun was typical of those released by other young artists at the time. It showed Rihanna with pink glossy lips, big gold hoop earrings and a gold sequinned jacket looking out at the camera. Only her head and shoulders were visible. She looked like the perfect all-American teen – even though she wasn’t. The background was purple and pink, with her name in orange at the top above the title. It will always be a special cover to Rihanna and her family because this was her first release.
She had different cover art for the Japanese edition of the album, though. It was much simpler and Rihanna is shown standing up, leaning to the side. Her earrings don’t distract your attention away from her face as they do in the original cover, and the image actually looks more like the Rihanna we now know and love.
For the cover art of ‘Pon de Replay’, Rihanna wears the same gold sequinned top she wore in the video, with her hair wavy, and she’s smiling at someone (or something) off to her right. The background is black and there are twinkling lights up above, like stars. This time her name is at the bottom and the single’s title is inside a yellow shape underneath.
For ‘If It’s Lovin’ That You Want’, Rihanna is shown in another head-and-shoulders shot. This time her body is turned away, but she has turned her face to look at the camera. She isn’t smiling but she looks happy, and she’s wearing another pair of large gold earrings.
The first song to be released from the album was ‘Pon de Replay’, and it had actually been one of four tracks on the demo that Rihanna sent out to record companies. It was released on 25 August 2005 in the UK, and a day later in the US.
Rihanna didn’t like the song when she first heard it and thought it sounded a bit like a nursery rhyme. She trusted Evan Rogers and Carl Sturken, though, and the more she sang it, the more she liked it; by the time she recorded the track, she thought it was a good song.
For ‘Pon de Replay’ she was using the language of Barbados, where they sometimes use broken English. ‘Pon’ means on, ‘de’ means the, and ‘replay’ is an instruction to the DJ to put her song on repeat.
For Rihanna, filming the video was a dream come true, because this was something she had always wanted to do. It was set in a club and she had to do a lot of dancing, which she loved. The concept was that she would arrive with two friends, notice how quiet the music was and that everyone was looking bored, and ask the DJ to turn the volume up. Once the music gets louder, everyone starts dancing.
The video was directed by Little X (who now calls himself Director X), and the DJ in the video was played by DJ Cipha Sounds. Little X has directed lots of music videos, but he is best known for his work on the Sean Paul videos and R Kelly videos.
In the ‘Pon de Replay’ video, Rihanna wanted to show her love for her home country, and wore a ring featuring the trident-head design from the Barbados national flag.
The single reached No. 2 in the US charts behind Mariah Carey’s ‘We Belong Together’, which enjoyed 14 weeks at No. 1. At this time Mariah Carey was virtually unstoppable, so Rihanna must have felt that getting to No. 2 was like getting to No. 1; it was the highest anyone could hope to achieve because of the immense popularity of ‘We Belong Together’.
Rihanna told Glamour magazine: ‘In a matter of weeks, the first single (“Pon de Replay”) went to radio. Then we shot a video, and the song just took off. I was in the Top 10 with huge artists who I looked up to. Jay-Z kept telling me, “This never happens, so don’t get used to it.” I saw how special that moment was.’
The single didn’t just do well in the US; it also topped the music charts in New Zealand, Japan and Hungary, and landed at No. 2 in the UK and Ireland charts. For many people worldwide, it became the iconic song of summer 2005.
Because ‘Pon de Replay’ did so well, Rihanna was offered the opportunity to do nine shows around the US. The mini-tour was sponsored by Procter & Gamble, who wanted her to promote a new range of their deodorant brand: ‘Rihanna’s Secret Body Spray Tour’ went to Cincinnati, Chicago, Salt Lake City, Washington D.C., Portland, Seattle, Dallas, Phoenix and Atlanta. It started on 26 October 2005 and ended on 7 December of the same year. At the beginning of each show, the audience members were given a free sample from the new range and then Rihanna would get on stage and sing six songs. Afterwards she would answer questions from the audience and sign autographs. They were nice, intimate performances, and allowed her to meet some of her fans for the first time. She hadn’t been a ‘celebrity’ for long and so she still found it a bit strange when fans asked for her autograph and wanted to pose for photos with her.
Rihanna had worked so hard that she deserved her success, but she was so busy, she couldn’t go home. She told OK! Magazine at the time: ‘I haven’t been back there [to Barbados] in so long. I live in New York now. When I do get a chance to go back to St Michael, I go to The Boatyard, which is a club. I just love it. The whole atmosphere is young and the music is really good.’
The second single to be released from Music of the Sun was ‘If It’s Lovin’ That You Want’. Released on 28 November 2005, it failed to impress USA audiences as much as her debut single had, reaching only No. 36 in the charts. It did better in other countries, though, and got to No. 8 in Ireland, No. 9 in Australia and New Zealand, No. 11 in the UK and No. 13 in Holland.
The music video was directed by Marcus Raboy and they shot it on a beach in California. Since her first single came out, the female dancers had become friends of Rihanna’s, because they had been promoting it together around the world. The men in the video were complete strangers to her, and she only met them on the day of shooting. They all got to ride jet skis and play around in the waves, just like Rihanna does with her real friends in Barbados. The trident-head symbol made a re-appearance here in three sand sculptures behind Rihanna and her dancers in the torchlit scene.
During filming, Rihanna told MTV: ‘This video is about having fun, giving off the vibe of the Caribbean. We did some mermaid-looking stuff down on the sand and I’m just [performing] to the camera as if it were my boyfriend. Now we’re going to do [some scenes with] the Tiki torches. It’s going to be incredible!
‘The song is basically telling a guy, “If it’s lovin’ that you want, you should make me your girl because I’ve got what you need.”’
The third and final single from the album was called ‘Let Me’ and it was only released in Japan, where it charted at No. 8.
While she was promoting Music of the Sun, Rihanna had a cameo role in the straight-to-DVD movie, Bring It On: All or Nothing (2006). In addition to playing herself, she was the announcer in the scene that is the climax of the movie, where the winning cheerleading squad is revealed. Rihanna was acting in front of hundreds of people, but she didn’t let it bother her. What is more, she hadn’t had any time to rehearse, because she had only one day on set.
In the movie, one of the cheerleaders from the smart school complains that the other squad has won, and what she says to Rihanna is ‘borderline racist’ according to director Steve Rash, who talked to 4Music about it. He said he hadn’t given Rihanna a line to respond with, and so she just let her body language do the talking. That impressed the director, because it takes a real actor to be able to convey a response using only their movements rather than words.
The movie starred Heroes actress Hayden Panettiere and Beyoncé’s sister Solange Knowles, and was the second follow-up to the 2000 movie Bring It On starring Kirsten Dunst. Rihanna didn’t see the movie as being her first big acting job because she was playing herself, but her fans loved it.
She later admitted during interviews that she was looking forward to acting in a drama, horror or action movie in the future.
Her family and friends in Barbados were very happy that Rihanna was living her dreams, but that didn’t stop some people from making up lies about her. Rihanna explained to journalist Margeaux Watson from EW.com: ‘When I first got signed and went back to Barbados, people started talking about it. They said, “Oh, she must’ve slept with Jay-Z to get her deal.” That’s where I first heard it. They talk s*** about me all the time.’ It was as though they were jealous of her success and wanted to pull her down to their level.
People in the US started saying that Rihanna and Jay-Z were having a relationship, even though he was dating Beyoncé at the time. This was particularly hard for Rihanna to take, as she was only just starting out and Jay-Z was her mentor, nothing more. They had been out to dinner together, but that was work-related, and he was always at the end of the phone if she had any difficulties. Both denied being in a relationship to the press, but some people refused to let the story die and continued to make comments on internet forums.
The media seemed to suggest that Rihanna was trying to steal Jay-Z from Beyoncé, and that Beyoncé in turn was furious with Rihanna. In fact, this couldn’t have been further from the truth. When Rihanna was interviewed by talk-show host Tyra Banks, she had a broken toe, so her foot was strapped up and she had to walk with a cane for support; Tyra joked that really Beyoncé had pushed her down some stairs, which made Rihanna laugh.
She had actually been on holiday, and on the first night she wanted to go to the pool – even though it was 4.30am. While rushing back to her friend’s room, she managed to walk into a heavy mahogany chair and knocked her toe the wrong way.
Rihanna and Jay-Z talked about the rumours from the beginning, and he told her to try and ignore what people were saying. The more people talked about her supposed rivalry with Beyoncé, the more annoying it became. In fact the two singers get on really well, and Rihanna thinks Beyoncé is one of the sweetest people you could meet.
Even though Rihanna was busy, she still had the occasional holiday, and returned to Barbados for Christmas 2005. She enjoyed catching up with her friends and family, eating her mum’s food and visiting all the places she loved to go before she was famous. She missed her music, though, and was eager to get back to recording.