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Rihanna’s Unapologetic “New Album”

November 19, 2012

Superstar checks off an ‘SNL’ gig, GQ cover and a globe-trotting tour on the way to her seventh album release.

As timelines go, promo for Rihanna’s brand-new album, Unapologetic, kicked off in November, ramping up the same month the hotly anticipated LP was shipped to stores. But as super-unofficial countdowns go, we’d say it started a month or so ago, with the release of a video titled “The Real Chris Brown.”

In a brief clip, the “Don’t Judge Me Singer” — admittedly a little tipsy in the backseat of a car — confesses he’s in love with “two people”: long-suffering girlfriend Karreuche Tran and the megastar ex who he was convicted of assaulting one dark weekend in 2009. “I love Karrueche very much but I don’t want to see her hurt over my friendship with Rihanna,” he announced to MTV News in a statement explaining his breakup from Tran.

There was backlash, of course, but Rihanna was quick to remind the public that she can only go one way: her own. Her personal life was “Nobodies Business,” and she and Brown would use the occasion of Unapologetic to make that known. Moreover, it became increasingly clear that the most-liked girl on Facebook really didn’t care if you liked her (“Poor dat,” as she often says).

“My story is definitely going to be a happily ever after, no matter what,” she told MTV News earlier this month in that clipped Bajan accent.

Go Behind the Scenes of Rihanna’s 777 Tour!

Indeed, the leggy beauty has made a habit of bypassing the P.R. spin and record label interference to talk that talk directly to the Rihanna Navy; they are legion, and she comforts, chastises and, most important, connects deeply to them. In return, they’ve held her down, a global force that has consumed her mind-boggling seven albums in as many years by the millions.

But the 24-year-old is as tireless as she is fearless, and she set out to make the delivery of this album an EVENT. Her soulful November 3 appearance on “SNL” and the release of her atmospheric “Diamonds” video a few days later were just preludes. Last Wednesday, the international star grabbed her leather backpack and boarded a Boeing twinjet with an itinerary of seven cities in seven days. Journalists, her entourage and, of course, a few lucky fans were recruited for the ride.

And as standout performances from the quickie jaunt hit the Net each day — slow-burning ballad “Stay,” club-stomper “Phresh Out the Runway” — the talk shifted from her much-scrutinized love life and those magazine covers and circled back to the music. Now, with her hotly anticipated album finally out, it’s a conversation we’re looking forward to having.

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