Rihanna has recently embraced her Barbadian roots through her album "Anti" and uses her large platform to promote causes like HIV/AIDS awareness. While her music was previously in an American accent, she now sings in her native accent. She is seen as rebellious, fun, talented, outspoken, and confident. Throughout her career, Rihanna has been the constant focal image in her marketing, making her recognizable alone. Fashion is also a major part of her image, having appeared in high fashion magazines and collaborated with designers. Her album covers and images further portray her as independent and stylish. On social media, Rihanna shares her passions, opinions, and cultural identity, sometimes through controversial

1. Rihanna’s Star
Identity

2. 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

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.