6 music videos that prove Rihanna is a 'Video Vanguard'
Her flaming-red hair circa Loud. Her oversized denim jacket in FourFiveSeconds. Her Spring Breakers-esque gangster posturing in Needed Me. Rihanna has always been an artist who's recognized that to be a pop icon, the visuals accompanying her various eras are just as important as the music.
That's why, this Sunday, MTV's Video Music Awards will present Rih with the Video Vanguard award, a lifetime achievement honor-of-sorts that celebrates stars whose videos have helped define pop music's modern narrative.
In honor of Rihanna's onscreen legacy, the USA TODAY Life team spotlights six of Rihanna's most unforgettable clips.
Needed Me, 2016
Rihanna creates indelible characters in each of her videos, whether she’s a demonic inmate straight out of American Horror Story (Disturbia), or a latex-clad dominatrix bending to the media’s will (S&M). But the reigning persona of her ANTI era has been that of a gun-toting, DGAF ice queen: half-naked, smoking a joint oceanside one minute, before sauntering into a strip club to mow you down the next. With Spring Breakers director Harmony Korine at the helm, Needed Me explores the hazy, sordid underbelly that this version of RiRi inhabits, with visuals so eye-poppingly WTF that you can’t look away from the carnage. —Patrick Ryan
Umbrella, 2007
The spotlight. The rainstorm of sparks. The silver body paint. Those iconic “ellas.” Umbrella and its deceptively simple, subtly sexy music video heralded the coming of a new Rihanna, one that was classy, brassy and bold. Set against a sleek black background and paired with similarly sleek beats, Rihanna gave us the bop of 2007 with Umbrella, and the music video cemented her place in pop music history. — Hoai-Tran Bui
We Found Love, 2011
To accompany the breathless EDM of her 2011 single, Rihanna needed to capture the same kind of wild abandon in its video. So she tapped into the ultra-hip fashions and bleak urban exteriors of Skins, the seminal British TV series about teenagers behaving badly, for an unbelievably stylish few minutes of beautiful people making out, taking drugs, and posing in front of various explosions. Out of Rihanna's videography, We Found Love most deserved an extended short-film treatment, with her Needed Me clip serving as its sequel. — Maeve McDermott
BBHMM, 2015
Critics were about FourFiveSeconds from wildin’ when Rihanna first debuted this video. But what some saw as torture porn, I — along with others — saw as a righteous revenge fantasy. In the video, we see Rihanna’s very livelihood upended by her accountant’s blatant mismanagement (Peter Gounis, what’s good?), which evokes ideas about betrayal and the entitlement — specifically, white male entitlement — to the fruit of women of color’s labor. Yes, that reading uncomfortably reduces the accountant’s wife to a pawn in Rihanna’s subsequent struggle for justice. And no, no one’s humanity should ever be reduced to that. But women of color know the feeling all too well, which made this subversion work for me. — Jaleesa Jones
Watch the NSFW video here.
What's My Name, 2010
This video is the opposite of "crying over spilled milk." Drake and Rihanna are frequent co-stars in their videos, serving as one another's default fill-ins for whatever kind of romantic partner they're singing about. He played the object of her lust in Work, and she did a lot of posing in his Take Care. But never were the two stars (who've also courted rumors of their real-life romantic involvement) as endearing as they are in What's My Name, playing two strangers who embark on the hottest trip to the bodega we've ever seen. — Maeve McDermott
FourFiveSeconds, 2015
The black-and-white video is not as flashy as RiRi’s others, but it’s absolutely timeless. Not to sound too much like the American Beauty guy, obsessed with the plastic bag, but I find the allure of this video is its simplicity. Also, I’m here for Rihanna’s brows, that denim jacket, and the highlighting on her brow bone. The vid is so emotional, Rihanna even lets out a few tears, which I assume are for the Millennials who don’t know who Paul McCartney is. — Erin Jensen