In Pictures: Rihanna’s W Magazine Photo Spread

Rihanna is featured in the February 2010 issue of W Magazine here is the Quick & Dirty-Fast Facts from the interview:

On Chris Brown

Though she has stated that February 8 was the first time that Brown—with whom she became best friends early in her career, before things turned romantic about two years ago—beat her, she says that in retrospect, there were warning signs. “There were control issues, insecurity,” she says. “When people are insecure they become very controlling and they can get very aggressive and in turn abusive. It doesn’t have to be physical. Like they would say bad stuff to you to make you feel lesser than them just so they would have control in the relationship. It takes a big toll on your emotions and on your everyday life. It changes you.”

On Her Favorite Part of the Day

She is full of sass and teasing sarcasm; most sentences end with a playful chuckle. She loves to blast music by rock ’n’ roll band Kings of Leon and play with her toy poodle, Oliver, who, she explains, is under the impression that he’s a big dog who can protect her from intruders at the Los Angeles house she shares with her closest friend from Barbados. The best part of her day, she says, is “when I’m with my glam team getting my hair and makeup done—we talk so much s—!”

On Writing + Recording ‘Rated R’

The record is a dissertation on her relationship with Brown and its bloody demise, and it has surprised reviewers who had written her off as a talented but manufactured pop sensation. “This was a different type of record for me,” she says in her steady island lilt, sitting in a backstage dressing room after taping a BET show. “It was really personal; it was from me in the most authentic way. It’s like a movie”—hence the title—“in that when I was making this album, every day I was in a different mood. Sometimes I was pissed off, sometimes I was miserable, and every song brings out a different story.” For the first time, she was intimately involved with the lyrics, writing many of them herself and spending time with her collaborators (who included Jeezy, Justin Timberlake and Ne-Yo) explaining her emotions and working on translating them. “It’s still hard to listen to certain songs,” she admits. “Certain ones I couldn’t even record—I’d keep pushing them back [on the schedule].”

On Her Styling Preferences

“My stylist Mariel Haenn and I always try to do something sexy but never too girly—we always try to put a little toughness in there,” she says. Today she is wearing harem-pant overalls, which she has paired with a black headpiece that can only be described as a hairnet, and which she somehow manages to make look cool. She explains that the line “I’m such a f—in’ lady” from Rated R’s single “Wait Your Turn” has become like a mantra for her, aesthetically and otherwise.