Rihanna’s Star Identity

Rihanna’s Artist Identity• Rihanna’s recent ‘reclamation’ of her Barbadian roots

through her album ‘Anti’ has presented a new side to her artist identity. Now she has been seen to use her huge platform in beneficial way to establish her views and ideas. For example, she recently took part in international HIV/AIDs testing day and got tested publically in order to raise awareness of the importance of knowing your HIV status.

• Much of her music previously had been sung in a standard American accent in order to reach her TA at the time, however with the drop of her ‘Anti’ album, she sticks to her roots and ditches the disciplined American accent.

• Rihanna is seen as; rebellious; fun; interesting; talented; out-of-the-box; outspoken; fearless; on-trend; confident; desirable; cool

Synergy Throughout all of Rihanna’s marketing campaigns, she is used as a constant focal image. This has meant that now she is recognisable by her face alone, even. Fashion is a huge trademark for Rihanna so they use this across her marketing campaign to determine her interests. She’s appeared on high fashion magazines and had collaborations with high end designers connoting her love for fashion and her following of the trends.

Albums

As you can see, the majority of her albums have the focal image as herself often presented in an especially stylised way which give her an edge compared to other mainstream artists. It also shows her to be independent and perhaps feisty in some of the images when she had short hair.

Social Media

Rihanna uses her social media in order to display her passions, opinions and cultural identity to her audience. This can be seen through her, sometimes controversial, tweets.