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Rihanna has sold more than 20 million albums and 60 million singles[5] which makes her one of the best selling artists of all time. She is the youngest artist in Billboard charts history to achieve eleven number-one singles on the Hot 100.[6] As of March 2010, Rihanna has sold approximately 7.3 million album units and over 33.7 million digital singles in the United States.[7][8] Billb
Rihanna was born Robyn Rihanna Fenty on February 20, 1988, in Saint Michael, Barbados, to Monica Braithwaite, a retired accountant, and Ronald Fenty, a warehouse supervisor for a garment factory.[13] Her mother, a native of Guyana, is Afro-Guyanese, and her father is of Barbadian and Irish descent.[14] The eldest of three siblings, she has two brothers, Rorrey and Rajad Fenty.[15] She also has two half-sisters and a half-brother from her father's side, each born by different mothers before Rihanna's father married her mother.[16][17] She grew up listening to reggae music,[18] and began singing at around the age of seven.[15] Her childhood was deeply affected by her father's addiction to crack cocaine, alcohol, and marijuana,[19] and her parents' rocky marriage ended when she was 14, although he remained a part of her life.[13] During her parents' marriage, she suffered from excruciating headaches leading doctors to think she had a brain tumor and underwent several CAT scans from the age of eight until her parents separated.[20] She grew up in a modest three-bed bungalow in Bridgetown and would sell clothes with her dad on a street stall.[21] She attended Charles F. Broome Memorial School, a primary school in Barbados, and then the Combermere School, where she formed a musical trio with two of her classmates.[15] She was an army cadet in a sub-military programme that trained with the military of Barbados and Shontelle was her drill sergeant.[22] Although she initially wanted to graduate from high school, she chose to pursue her musical career instead.[23]
In December 2003, Rihanna met American music producer Evan Rogers through a mutual friend who knew Rogers' wife.[24] When Rogers and his Bajan-born wife were in Barbados for the holidays, Rihanna and her two bandmates auditioned for him in his hotel room,[25] who said that "the minute Rihanna walked into the room, it was like the other two girls didn't exist." While auditioning for Rogers, she sang Destiny's Child's cover of "Emotion".[15] Impressed, Rogers set up a second meeting, and, with her mom present, invited her to do some recording and write with him and Carl Sturken at their studio in New York.[26] Shortly after turning 16, she won the Miss Combermere school beauty pageant, as well as her high school talent show with a performance of Mariah Carey's "Hero".[27] Over the next year, Rihanna and her mom shuttled back and forth to Rogers' home in Stamford, Connecticut. With the help of Sturken, she recorded a four-song demo,[28] which included the ballad "Last Time", a cover of Whitney Houston's 
"For the Love of You",[15] and what would become her first hit, "Pon de Replay". It took a year to record the demos, as Rihanna was still going to school and therefore would only record during her summer and Christmas school breaks.[15]In January 2005, Rogers began shopping Rihanna's four-song demo to various recording companies.[15] A copy of the demo was sent to Def Jam Recordings, where Jay Brown, an A&R executive, overheard it and played it for the label's then-president, Jay-Z.[29] When he heard "Pon de Replay", Jay-Z was skeptical about Rihanna at first because he felt that the song was too big for her, stating that "when a song is that big, it's hard [for a new artist] to come back from. I don't sign songs, I sign artists".[29] Def Jam was the first label to respond and invited her to audition where she sang "For the Love of You" for Jay-Z and L.A. Reid of Island Def Jam Music Group.[27] She was signed the same day and canceled a set of meetings with other labels.[28] After signing with Def Jam in February 2005, she relocated to the United States and moved in with Rogers and his wife. Although she still thinks of herself as Robyn, she chose her middle name as her stage name because, to her, the name Rihanna is just a stage that started in a recording studio in 2005.[30]
A month after the release of her debut album, she began working on her second studio album.[39] The album contained production from record producers Evan Rogers and Carl Sturken who produced most of her debut album, Stargate, J. R. Rotem and label-mate singer-songwriter Ne-Yo.[40] While recording the album, Rihanna served as an opening act for Gwen Stefani to promote her debut album.[41] The lead single, "SOS", peaked at number one on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming her first number-one in the United States.[32] A Girl Like Me was released in April 2006,[42] less than eight months after her debut. The album reached number five
on the Billboard 200[34] selling 115,000 copies in its first week and has been certified platinum by the RIAA, having shipped over one million units.[35][43] Internationally, the album peaked at number one on the Top Canadian Albums, five on the UK Albums Chart and number five on the Irish Album Chart. The critical response to the album was mixed; Rolling Stone magazine commented "Like her filler-packed debut album, this similar but superior follow-up doesn't deliver anything else as ingenious as its lead single."[44] Critics described the album as a record that almost identically alternates between the sunny dancehall/dub-pop, hip-hop-infused club bangers and gushy, adult-oriented ballads.[45]The second single, "Unfaithful", became a major worldwide hit, reaching the top ten in dozen countries around the world, including the United States where it reached number six on the Billboard Hot 100, as well as topping the charts in Canada, France and Switzerland. The albums third single, "We Ride"[46] failed to reprise the success of the lead single but the fourth single, "Break It Off" featuring Sean Paul, jumped from number fifty-two to number ten eventually peaking at number nine.[47][48] After the release of the album, Rihanna embarked on her first headlining tour, the Rihanna: Live in Concert Tour. She then embarked on the Rock The Block Tour and then toured with Pussycat Dolls from November 2006 to February 2007 in the United Kingdom.[49] Rihanna also made her acting debut in a cameo role in the straight-to-DVD film Bring It On: All or Nothing, which was released on August 8, 2006.[50]
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