Rihanna covers the May 2020 issue of British Vogue, styled by editor-in-chief Edward Enninful. Steven Klein captures the superstar businesswoman and activist, interviewed by Afua Hirsch in ‘Tell Your Friends To Pull Up!”/ Hair by Yusef and Naphia White; makeup by Isamaya Ffrench

Rihanna is another of those stars with probably 25 interviews on AOC. We look for the new nuggest, which absolutely starts with the Steven Klein covers in which Rihanna wears durags. For AOC, the most interesting story is that of the durags and black hair. We flushed that story out last week and urge people to read it.

The activist was honored the week before her interview at the NAACP Image Awards in Pasadena, Ca. As Rihanna accepted the President’s Award, she issued a powerful demand.

“We can’t let the desensitivity seep in. How many of us in this room have colleagues and partners and friends from other races, sexes, religions?” she asked, before invoking some of the tragedies that have become closely associated with the Black Lives Matter movement. “When we’re marching and protesting and posting about the Michael Brown Jrs and the Atatiana Jeffersons of the world, tell your friends to pull up!”

Rihanna introduces a new nugget of information into Hirsch’s discussion of her background in Barbados. Her comments were so interesting to me, that Rihanna sent me off on a personal research project. Rihanna’s mother was an immigrant to Barbados from Guyana, the former British colony in South America.

Building on her earlier comments about how much she loves Mexico — feels really at peace there — Rihanna volunteers that Guyanese immigrants were unpopular in Barbados when she was a child.

“The Guyanese are like the Mexicans of Barbados,” she says. “So I identify – and that’s why I really relate and empathise with Mexican people or Latino people, who are discriminated against in America. I know what it feels like to have the immigration come into your home in the middle of the night and drag people out.”
“Not my mother, my mother was legal,” she is careful to clarify, “but let’s just say I know what that fight looks like. I’ve witnessed it. I’ve been in it. I was probably, what, eight-years-old when I experienced that in the middle of the night. So I know how disheartening it is for a child – and if that was my parent that was getting dragged out of my house, I can guarantee you that my life would have been a shambles.”
“So when I see these injustices happening, it’s hard to turn a blind eye,” Rihanna continues. “It’s hard to pretend it’s not happening. The things that I refuse to stay silent on, these are things that I genuinely believe in.”

Read the entire interview at British Vogue and spend time in our deep Rihanna archives at AOC.