• It has only been announced that Rihanna will perform “Princess Of China” with Coldplay at the Grammys this weekend. However, Rihanna’s dancers are rehearsing as well. Maybe we should expect a few surprises… The 54th Annual Grammy Awards will be held on February 12, 2012, at the Staples Center in Los Angeles being broadcast on CBS 8:00 p.m. ET.

• Would you like “Birthday Cake” to be a single? That’s what Rihanna asked her 13 million Twitter followers yesterday. She also tweeted: “Now here’s the trick question! #IF I put collaborator on it, who would u wanna see lick the icing off????? #CAKE I need somebody #DIRRRTY on my Birthday #CAKE ;) lol And please!!!! No girls allowed on #CAKE” Thoughts??

• Rihanna is this year’s 9th most desirable woman according to AskMen.com. “In her memoir Bossypants, Tina Fey cheered Beyonce for “bringing back the leg meat.” Well, Rihanna has taken that “leg meat” torch and run with it. Watching her dance makes us forget that we ever desired supermodels with sticks for legs. Even the snooty Brits can’t get enough of her. When Coldplay’s Chris Martin needed a female vocalist for his recent “Princess of China,” he got Rihanna — even though his wife Gwyneth Paltrow is trying to jumpstart her singing career. Sorry, Gwyneth, you’ve got no “leg meat.”"

• Rihanna’s 24th birthday is just 2 weeks away! If you wish to be a part of our Birthday Project, make sure to click here.

Less than 2 months after its release, Rihanna’s sixth album “Talk That Talk” has sold over 2 million copies worldwide.

In other news, Rihanna’s hit single “We Found Love” is #1 worldwide for 11 weeks!

Congratulations, RiRi!

Rihanna tweeted the single cover of “Talk That Talk” feat. Jay-Z, the 3rd single of her latest album.

Thoughts??

With hit singles like “We Found Love” and “You Da One” as part of the tracklist, it was only a matter of time until Rihanna’s Talk That Talk was certified gold in the United States.

Back on Dec. 16 of last year, the RIAA solidified RiRi’s sixth studio album as gold status after shipping out over 500,000 copies of the project. This week Riri actually passed the 500k mark by selling another 42,000 copies this week, bringing the total sales to 514,000.

Her gold status comes less than 2 months after her Nov. 21, 2011 release of TTT. Congrats, Rihanna!

RiRi tweeted:

#YOUDAONEVIDEO you know im already in trouble 4 this but, i like to keep yall in the loop.

“You Da One” is the second single off of Rihanna’s sixth album, “Talk That Talk”.
Request “You Da One”; Buy “You Da One” on iTunes.

After the success of Grammy-nominated Loud, Rihanna and Def Jam’s VP of A&R, Bu Thiam, were faced with a dilemma. Namely, how to top that record on the pop star’s sixth go at a full-length album, Talk That Talk.

To understand how passionate Thiam is about that first collabo with Ms. Fenty, know that when MTV News caught up with him last week, he half-jokingly threatened to “pull a Kanye” if the Bajan superstar doesn’t take home the coveted Album of the Year in February. The follow-up (Rih and Bu’s second walk down the studio aisle) to Loud needed to do no less than “change music.”

“My job as an A&R is to always bring her different records that are hit records but doesn’t sound like anything she’s done in the past,” Thiam explained.

The stylish VP (and brother of hip-hop star Akon) was sporting some extra scruff and a full head of hair thanks to coming out on the losing end of a bet with Young Jeezy, whose highly anticipated TM 103 Thiam also helped steer to its December 20 drop date. We were eager to hear about how Rih’s team strategized early on for her latest LP. The exec recalled the initial meeting he and Rihanna had when Talk That Talk was still just chatter.

“Her whole thing is, ‘How can we be different? How can we change music? How can we go from having a great album like Loud and still come with a better album and keep pushing and keep hitting the bar?’ The good thing about Rihanna,” he said, “is that she doesn’t want to be in the same realm as anybody else. She wants to be in a zone where when you think of Rihanna, you think of new, you think of different.”

“Different” (Thiam uses the word like a mantra) meant bringing EDM wunderkind Calvin Harris into the fold. The Scotsman happens to share a management home with Rihanna in Roc Nation, where Jay Brown made the introductions.

Songwriter/producer Harris not only injected Talk That Talk with a pair of hypnotic dance numbers, “Where Have You Been” and “We Found Love,” but his latter contribution gave Rihanna the 11th #1 single of her career.

Still, even as “We Found Love” tops Billboard‘s Hot 100 for the fifth consecutive week, Thiam said it wasn’t a sure shot: a melancholy track that essentially consists of a hook looping around a single verse. “With the Calvin Harris record, it’s a different-sounding pop record … it’s not the usual dance-floor 808,” he conceded.

The growing predominance of DJ culture in pop music may have helped usher Harris to the project, but the 23-year-old singer’s desire to strike her own chord was the ultimate green light. “It’s a different sound and that’s what she wanted to go with,” Bu added. “She wanted to change music. I have to salute her for taking a chance ’cause most artists wouldn’t have done that.”

Billboard 200: Arriving in the No. 3 slot this week is Rihanna’s “Talk That Talk,” selling 197,000. It’s the diva’s sixth top 10 album and follows “LOUD,” which also launched at No. 3 a year ago (but with a bigger week: 207,000).

FYI: Rihanna’s “LOUD” has sold almost 6 million copies worldwide in less than a year.