Rihanna released her debut studio album, Music of the Sun in August 2005. All of her albums have been certified platinum and multi-platinum in the United States by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and have totalled sales of over 10 million copies in the country.

Since the beginning of her career in 2005, Rihanna has sold 60 million album units and 215 million digital tracks worldwide, making her one of the best-selling artists of all time.

And forgive the pun, but there’s still no real blueprint for him: Past 50, a billionaire, married with children-not only capable of artistic growth (as he proved so eloquently on 2017’s 4:44), but also willing to embrace it.Rihanna performing in Toronto during the Diamonds World Tour in March 2013.īarbadian singer Rihanna has released eight studio albums, two remix albums, one reissue, seven box sets and three extended plays. Even as he ascended to the executive suite-a move that not only rechristened rappers as the vertically integrated businessmen they already were, but also opened up new paths for black artists navigating corporate America-he remained stoic, a little ruthless, playful about a past that most might not have come back from.Īdd to it a dexterity on the mic-not to mention a deep, intuitive love for language-that helped bring rap out of the yes-yes-y’all era and into another in which MCs functioned as American griots, chroniclers of the black American experience whose chains flashed bright but whose words flashed even brighter. Jay-Z (born in 1969) didn’t romanticize the streets (“Recruited lieutenants with ludicrous dreams of gettin’ cream/‘Let’s do this,’ it gets tedious”), but he never claimed remorse for them either. By the time he released 1996’s Reasonable Doubt, he said he was the oldest 26-year-old you’d ever want to meet. His childhood was violent: He started selling crack in his early teens and later quipped that getting a gun in Bed-Stuy was easier than getting public assistance.

Growing up in central Brooklyn (“I’m from Marcy Houses, where the boys die by the thousand”), Shawn Carter wrote rhymes everywhere: standing at a streetlight, on the backs of brown-paper bags, banging out beats on his windowsill to find the rhythm.

Jay z albums songs