Rihanna: a big-voiced beauty queen booms out

Sometimes all you have to do to get what you want is ask--at least, that's how easy it seemed for Robyn Rihanna Fenty. In "Pon de Replay," her Caribbean-flavored first single, she repeatedly pleads, "Come, Mr. DJ, won't you turn the music up?" Fortunately, the DJs responded, turning it up in clubs all over the country, and the song became arguably the jam of summer 2005.

Ironically, when Rihanna first listened to the finished version of "Pon," she didn't hear a hit. "I thought it was cute," says the Barbados-born singer. The riotous and infectious track runs dance-hall beats beneath warm, soaring R&B vocals not unlike that of her idol, Beyonce. "I would imitate her in front of the mirror in the bathroom, singing with a hairbrush as a micro phone," she says.

A demo Rihanna made last year quickly began to attract attention, and incidentally, it would be Beyonce's boyfriend, Jay-Z, who would insist on signing her to his label, Def Jam, on the spot, at 4:30 in the morning. This was a huge leap for a girl who previously had only garnered attention at a high school talent show.

"Pon de Replay" was just a taste of what her recently released debut album, Music of the Sun, offers. The record, which includes collaborations with up-and-coming Jamaican MC Vybz Kartel and rapper Elephant Man, features Rihanna's unique blend of reggae, R&B, and hip-hop. Says the singer: "It's new and fresh and totally me."

Piotr Orlov is a New York City-based writer and music curator.

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