Rihanna’s pregnant pause at the Super Bowl
The lipstick mogul shone bright like a diamond through her first live performance in five years, captivating an audience of over 200 million.
Rihanna is renowned for her bravery. Performing mid air, while appearing to be heavily pregnant, after the US military shot down three unidentified flying objects in the last 72-hours, is a superhuman feat at the Super Bowl.
The singer returned to the stage for the first time since 2018 on one of the world’s biggest stages where she captivated more than 200 million people around the world with a medley of her greatest hits, including Diamonds.
During her musical hiatus she’s gone on to establish lucrative fashion lines, make up collections, campaigned for AIDS, and in 2021 was awarded “the order of national hero” of her home country, Barbados, after the Caribbean nation became a Republic.
For her performance she was supported by a huge group of backup dancers who did most of the heavy lifting when it came to choreography. Dressing them all in white hazmat suits was either a nod to the under current of nuclear terror bubbling around the US or an homage to South Korea’s popular Squid Game TV series.
You can put your drama-free commute on Monday down to the eshays being preoccupied cashing in their royalties off the back of her show.
Eshay is an emerging youth subculture taking hold in Australia.
They have a penchant for wearing sportswear, butchering the King’s English and having a devil-may-care attitude tucked in their bum bags next to their vapes and expired public transport tickets.
Red sneakers are in vogue for this new generation of teenage delinquents right now. The coloured footwear is so ubiquitous some establishments around the country have banned patrons from entering. Just like bikies with patches, except this motley crew of a collective usually appropriate more culture than they create.
The singer and beauty entrepreneur is also perennially fashionable and donned a pair of red kicks.
It wasn’t her shoes, or even her medley of hits that captivated audiences around the world and online, it appears she also used her platform – a floating one –above Stadium Farm in Phoenix to debut her next project – being a mum to two under two.
She is now pregnant with her second child after giving birth to her first child in May 2022.
Her mini-concert ate up the majority of the 29-minute half time break between the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles. The Eagles were favourites for the match. A side stacked with NRL and AFL rejects Jordan Mailata and Arryn Siposs. They lost after the Chiefs broke a fourth quarter tie from a controversial penalty in the dying seconds of the game.
Rhianna’s halftime show set list consisted of her most popular tunes, some recorded and released more than a decade ago.
Many of them, including Work, All of the Lights and Umbrella, originally featured cameos by Drake, Kanye West and Jay Z, who was in the crowd with another of her collaborators Paul McCartney and her fans like Adele. A lot has changed in the prevailing years – culturally and socially – and on Monday, Rihanna pointedly performed them all solo wearing an unremarkable, crimson puffer suit despite the balmy 21 degree evening.
Minutes after she performed a slither of her 2010 pop ballad Only Girl (In the World) it shot up to #1 on the US iTunes chart.
Rihanna has had a complex relationship with the NFL.
In 2019 she told Vogue she turned down the opportunity to perform at the Super Bowl after quarterback Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the national anthem in 2016 to protest police brutality against the Black community.
“I couldn’t dare do that. For what? Who gains from that? Not my people. I couldn’t be a sell out. I couldn’t be an enabler. There’s things with that organisation that I do not agree with at all, and I was not about to go out and be of service to them in any way,” Rhianna said at the time.
Since then Kaepernick has settled with the NFL and now works exclusively as an activist.
Rihanna in that time has built a beauty empire to rival Revlon.
Fenty is a line of cosmetics that bear her surname and has been praised for being the most inclusive makeup options on the market thanks to launching with more than 40 shades of foundation.
The brand ran a simultaneous social media campaign to promote Rihanna’s live show and her cosmetics, with celebrities like Cara Delvingne sporting T-shirts with the slogan: “Rihanna concert interrupted by a football game, weird but whatever”.
There is speculation she lip synched but the lipstick mogul wiped away the criticism during the performance by pulling out some Fenty blotting powder.
Performers are reportedly not paid for their appearances at the US equivalent of the AFL, T20, A-League and NRL grand finals.
The Fenty compact she pulled out retails for $39. Product placements and 30-second advertisements during the Super Bowl usually costs advertisers north of $10 million.
Rihanna powdered her nose after her opening number, an ode to equality titled: Bitch Better Have My Money.
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