Rihanna on her father, a former crack addict:
“I had seen the marijuana and cocaine around him but I didn’t know what it was. I just knew that my mum didn’t like it, and they were always fighting about it. My mother was a very strong woman and tried to shelter us from as much as she could. But she was working, and he was at home, so there was only so much that she could hide from us. He’s OK, he’s drug-free now. He got over it a while ago because my mother wouldn’t let us go and see him otherwise. So he gave it up for us.”
Rihanna on working with Justin Timberlake:
“I was so starstruck at being in the same room as him.”
Rihanna on her good-girl-gone-bad image:
“I felt I was embarking on a whole new image, a whole new journey. I wanted to differentiate myself from the past. I have come into my own and I know what I’m doing now. I’ve called the new album Good Girl Gone Bad because I was determined to do it my way, I was sick of listening to what everyone else wanted. This is the way I like to look and sound, so I became very rebellious – that’s the attitude of the entire project. And some older people there, who tend to be very judgmental, are not pleased with my new image. But I’m not bad in a godless way”
Rihanna on drugs:
”I don’t want those problems. Even they didn’t want that to happen to them, and it’s a very sad situation. Outside the business, it’s easy to criticise them. It’s not hard for that kind of problem to happen, but you have to have good people around you to make sure it doesn’t. Artists work so hard and the people around them keep pushing, forgetting they’re human. And in turn the artist also forgets she’s human and stops caring – and that’s when you get lonely. If you travel the world and start to zone out in your hotel room, you turn to different things for comfort”
Rihanna on her free time:
“I live on my own in LA and at first my mother was a little concerned because she gets worried about my health. When I’m not working, I love just lying on my patio, listening to the breeze. It reminds me of the Caribbean. I’m travelling so much, but there’s nowhere like home. Sometimes I get so lonely, and it’s frustrating. Most of the time I’m in a different time zone to everyone else when I call them up – but then I’m a citizen of the world now.”
Rihanna on her childhood dreams:
“To have recorded Umbrella, which became such a huge hit, and to make three albums in under two years – I had none of this in my dreams when I was a child. All I wanted to do was to make music all over the world.”
[Source]