RIHANNA

A TITAN of MUSIC, a MOTHER of two, a self-made MOGUL, and the newly minted FACE of DIOR J'ADORE 20 years since her first chart-topping single, just might have MANIFESTED her DREAM LIFE

- LY NETTE NYLANDER

It's just past 4:30 in the morning, and Rihanna lets out a hearty laugh. Settled in a swivel chair in the living room of a dimly lit penthouse suite in a downtown Manhattan hotel, she is telling me about a game she and A$AP Rocky, her partner of five years and the father of her two children, invented at the end of a long road trip they took during the height of Covid. They called it Mickey Mouse, she explains, "because we were like, we're going to take walks for hours. And every time, we would get these nutcrackers from Harlem, and we would say, 'Every time we see a rat, we got to take a shot." She clarifies: "Not a shot. A sip of the nutcracker. That's like taking a shot or 12." The drink, a New York City summer specialty consisting of saccharine-sweet fruit juice and high-proof liquor, is so-named because it hits hard.

It is at this moment that Rocky, as Rihanna affectionately calls him, who is fully dressed and curled up asleep on a couch nearby, wakes up, as jazz he's been playing crescendos in the background. "He put that on for you. He thought you'd like it." Rihanna is resplendent in a light-blue cutout cashmere sweater from Ferragamo, pinstripe shorts from her own Savage X Fenty line, and flourishes of spiralset and cushion-cut diamonds on every finger. Her hair, long and black with a center part, is the perfect complement to a face full of expertly applied makeup. "Damn, you heard that from back there? You being nosy," she chides him in that familiar Bajan lilt.