Rihanna is nominated along with Taylor Swift, Eminem, Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga for Top Artist Award. The awards ceremony will take place on May 22nd! Ri is nominated in 18 categories! Don’t forget to vote for her in Fan Favourite Award category!! Click here!

There’s nothing that makes a pop star irresistible like some actual edge-and Rihanna cuts through the competition like a candy-coated switchblade. “Trends are boring,” she says. “It’s boring to see everyone doing the same thing.” No one’s yawning at RiRi: In the past year, the beautiful Barbadian diva has proven beguilingly unpredictable. Who could forget her confession this year that she’s sexually submissive, a theme emphasized in the hook to her controversial single “S&M”: “I may be bad, but I’m perfectly good at it/ Sex in the air, I don’t care, I love the smell of it/ Sticks and stones may break my bones, but chains and whips excite me.” Whew.

Then she discovered Twitter: speaking her mind online sparked a catty tweet smackdown with R&B singer Ciara. They made up, but Rihanna’s outspokenness didn’t stop. “No more corny label tweets!” she exclaimed. “I just got on there and started talking.” And of course, there is Rihanna’s surprising reason for reducing the limits of her restraining order against physically abusive ex-boyfriend Chris Brown. “I just didn’t want to make it more difficult for him professionally. What he did was a personal thing,” she told Rolling Stone.

“It had nothing to do with his career. Saying he has to be a hundred feet away from me, he can’t perform at awards shows-that definitely made it difficult for him…[But] it doesn’t mean we’re gonna make up, or even talk again.”

Rihanna faces controversy head on, no apologies: her duet with Eminem, “Love the Way You Lie,” seems to openly confront the issues inherent in an abusive relationship like the one she had with Brown. On the one hand, it’s raw. On the other, it’s impossible to look away-and the combination proved compelling: “Love the Way You Lie” was an international pop-cultural phenomenon, and helped solidify Eminem’s career comeback. “It’s kind of like the closing to that chapter, and now we’re in a new stage,” she explains.

Of course, the more this good girl goes bad, the more she cements her superstar status. “She has a swagger that’s unbelievable,” explains Tor Erik Hermansen, half of the production duo Stargate who collaborated with RiRi on “S&M,” “Unfaithful,” “Don’t Stop the Music,” and numerous other smashes.

In November 2010, Rihanna released her fifth album, Loud. “I wanted songs that only I can do, not generic songs that everyone else could sing,” Rihanna says. Case in point: Loud’s second single, “What’s My Name,” a flirty collaboration with ex-flame Drake that gets extra frisson from the pair’s did-they-or-didn’t-they chemistry. “[Drake's] the only person I thought could really understand the melody of the song,” Rihanna says coyly. “The minute he heard it he said, ‘I know exactly what I’m going to do. I love it.’”

Knowing what she wants has paid off: Loud would sell more than 200,000 copies in its first week-the biggest initial sales of Rihanna’s career, and her fifth Top 10 album in a row. The album’s debut single, “Only Girl (in the World),” meanwhile, would hit No. 1, and go on to win a Grammy for Best Dance Recording. “What’s My Name” would also top the charts, as did “S&M,” making Rihanna the youngest artist ever to have 10 singles top the Billboard 100 in the chart’s five-decade-plus existence.

TEven on other people’s records, Rihanna was hard to escape this year. In addition to her Eminem collaboration, she also created fireworks on Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, with a cameo on the album’s unforgettable centerpiece, “All of the Lights.”

And her name has become a powerful enough brand to move her beyond music: recently, she put out her own signature fragrance, its provocative, poetic name – Reb’l Fleur – exposing deep personal roots. “My grandmother in Barbados used to call me her Rebel Flower,” she told People magazine. “I wanted something that said ‘Rihanna was here.’”

She’s also set to make her mark in movies. Rihanna’s first starring role in a film comes in the upcoming big-budget action epic Battleship, appearing alongside the young Hollywood likes of model/Andy Roddick spouse Brooklyn Decker, Friday Night Lights sex symbol Taylor Kitsch, and True Blood hunk Alexander Skarsgård. “My favorite part has been shooting in the ocean,” Rihanna notes. “We were going at top speed, and I had to shoot this really badass weapon off the front of the boat. There was gunpowder all in my mouth by the time it finished.”

The fearless firebrand insisted on doing as many of her own stunts as possible-even when a female stunt double was provided. “They always want me to sit down when the dangerous stuff happens, but I’m a control freak,” Rihanna says. “She doesn’t do it like I would do it.” That’s right: nobody does it better.

— Billboard

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