Rihanna is on the cover of a ton of magazines, but she rarely gives interviews, so her boozy lunch chat with director, author and artist Miranda July — of Me and You and Everyone We Know fame — for the New York Times Style Magazine is a rare treat from the Bajan superstar. It’s not what you would consider a normal interview — there’s no mention of Rihanna’s long awaited eighth studio album or the release of its cryptic artwork last week. Instead, the women focus on love, race and Googling vaginal health. Here are the top five tidbits…
On leaving Barbados
“That’s something I don’t think I could ever do. Send my only girl to another random country to live with people she’d just met,” Rihanna says of her mum’s decision to let her leave Barbados for New York. “It had to be God that paralysed Monica Fenty’s emotions so that she’d say, ‘Yes, go.’ To this day, I don’t know how that happened,” she adds, “But thank God it did”.
On her experience of race in New York
“You know, when I started to experience the difference — or even have my race be highlighted — it was mostly when I would do business deals,” she tells July, who surmises that, “everyone’s cool with a young black woman singing, dancing, partying and looking hot, but that when it comes time to negotiate, to broker a deal, she is suddenly made aware of her blackness”. “And, you know, that never ends, by the way. It’s still a thing,” Rihanna explains, “And it’s the thing that makes me want to prove people wrong. It almost excites me; I know what they’re expecting and I can’t wait to show them that I’m here to exceed those expectations”.
On what turns her on
“I’m turned on by guys who are cultured. That’ll keep me intrigued. They don’t have to have a single degree, but they should speak other languages or know things about other parts of the world or history or certain artists or musicians. I like to be taught. I like to sit on that side of the table.”
On what she Google searches
“Oh, random things. Like I will be sitting around Googling childbirth,” Rihanna answers, adding that, “Childbirth is putting it the not-gross way. I was searching the size of certain things, and how much they expand, and then what happens after…,” not seemingly to realise how the internet would blow up on hearing that, until July brings it up, asking, “Hey, you’re not about to get pregnant are you?”. The answer was resolutely no, see below.
On men
“Guys need attention,” Rihanna muses, “They need that nourishment, that little stroke of the ego that gets them by every now and then. I’ll give it to my family, I’ll give it to my work — but I will not give it to a man right now”. July notes that it took her “a long time to find a guy who wasn’t threatened by my power” and Rihanna replies, “I’m still in that time”.
Credits
Photography Craig McDean courtesy New York Times Style Magazine