![]() There's a makeup table in the room and Jen and Beth, the wardrobe assistant, and a rack containing every outfit she will wear. The changing area is defined only by curtains. The music is muffled when you're down here it's like listening to a neighbor's loud stereo. Say you were right underneath stage right, in the wardrobe room. ![]() She prays for God (a loving, generous god) to come into the place (the Izod Center) and make it amazing for herself and for the audience, who are one (kind of a Unitarian Universalist deal). Sweet Jesus, she's praying three seconds before she goes out there. She says, "House." And the lights in the stadium go off. She sips vodka as she walks down a corridor to the back of the stage. Everybody kind of looks as she wipes and preens and buffs herself to a perfect low gloss in a glorious ablution. Assemblages of bored men in color-coded T-shirts that say STAFF or VENDING or SECURITY. The random assortment of people with all-access passes. Guitar legend Nuno Bettencourt ( the Nuno Bettencourt). They are with her always.) Her manager and Jay-Z's right-hand man, Jay Brown, who has the best smile in the history of music. (These three women make up the core entourage. And her other best friend, her cousin Noella. She wipes herself off with a paper towel. As if she's just been dipped into the baptismal font. In her pink, orange, and yellow platform heels, she stands six two, easy. From here, about six feet away, you can see that it's encrusted with dozens of small stones of various colors. Twenty-three years after being born poor in Barbados, eight years after being discovered there by a producer on vacation, six years after being signed by Jay-Z, two years after being savagely beaten by her former boyfriend, the asshole Chris Brown, nine months after releasing an album that has yielded three number-one singles, she emerges from the dressing room in full regalia and walks out into the big void under the stands of the Izod Center. ![]() even the ten-year-olds seem puzzled.īACKSTAGE AT THE IZOD CENTER, NEW JERSEY, A COUPLE DAYS LATER My mom and grandma are in the house tonight.Īnd, uh, well. It's toward the end of the show - after "S&M," "Disturbia," "Only Girl (In the World)," "Run This Town," "Skin," and "Pon de Replay." After "Come on, rude boy / boy is you big enough?" and "Sex in the air / I don't care / I love the smell of it" and "I'll tell you all the secrets / that I'm keepin' / you can come inside" - after all that, she stops everything. At this moment, in this room, she is the essence of Fuck. "Work" is still riding high on top of the Billboard charts, but "Needed Me" is one of the best songs on ANTI, and this video might be compelling enough to help Rihanna take her own place at the Hot 100's peak.Madonna once did a Vegas-revue version of this show, but Rihanna is the indisputable champion of carnal pop. She heads into the back room and takes down her adversary with a few shots to the head, and it's a chilling, bloody scene. Rihanna's clearly in charge, whether she's strutting through the club with a pistol like she owns the place or lounging around a beachfront condo in some kind of sheer gown. "Needed Me" really does feel like something of a Spring Breakers sequel, one that happens to feature one of the biggest pop stars on the planet (sorry, Selena Gomez): it's full of mask-wearing gunmen, motorcycles ripping through shabby neighborhoods, and dimly lit strip club scenes. (He's also directed videos for Cat Power and Sonic Youth.) She teased the video on Twitter and Instagram early this morning, and the NSFW label definitely applies here - there's plenty of nudity and violence crammed into three minutes. Rihanna just released her video for ANTI highlight "Needed Me," a gift she's bestowing on the internet "just because it's 4/20." It's the third single she's released from the album to date - " Work" and " Kiss It Better" came first - and the video was directed by Harmony Korine, the director best known for 2013's lurid Florida fantasy Spring Breakers.
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