Rihanna is a household name when it comes to pop, hip hop, and R&B artists, but is the singer also a rapper?
Rihanna is not a rapper, although she has rapped on a few songs in the past. Unlike the female rappers Nicki Minaj and Cardi B, Rih is mostly a vocalist with only a few instances of herself rapping. In 2017, she did show her rap chops on the song Lemon in collaboration with N.E.R.D.
You can read more about rap, Rihanna’s use of rap, and famous female rappers below.
Rap in Hip Hop and R&B
Rihanna is a vocalist, also known as a singer. Rap is a style of performance within music that features more spoken word than singing. There are a lot of rappers who are also singers and vice versa, but Rihanna’s music tends to feature her singing along with a featured rap artist.
Rap is mostly used in the hip hop genre of music. Hip hop tends to bring a few different styles of music into play within its artistry. It will often feature DJing, singing, rapping, and bass lines. Hip hop music has also been referred to as rap music. Rihanna’s fourth and fifth studio albums, Rated R and Loud, were hip hop centric. Her eighth studio album, Anti, featured a hip hop subgenre known as hip hop soul.
R&B is the short form reference to Contemporary Rhythm and Blues music. R&B features a combination of hip hop, pop, soul, funk, rhythm and blues, and electronic. The genre was made popular by artists like Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, and Mariah Carey. R&B is the category of music that Rihanna’s songs mostly fall into.
Rap in Rihanna’s Songs
Even though RIhanna has rapped only the select few times, a lot of her songs feature rapping. The rap portions have been performed by a huge variety of famous rappers. Jay-Z has been a featured rapper on three of her songs: Talk That Talk, Umbrella, and Stranded (Haiti Mon Amour).
Drake has been a featured rapper on Rihanna’s songs What’s My Name? and Work. Sean Paul was featured on the song Break it Off. Jeezy was a featured rapper on the song Hard.
In turn, RIhanna has been a featured singer for countless rappers’ music. She was on Jay-Z’s song Run This Town, Kanye West’s song Famous, and T.I.’s song Live Your Life. She has sung with Nicki Minaj on her song Fly and Eminem’s Love the Way You Lie.
However, Rihanna showed us all that although she isn’t a rapper, she sure knows how to spit words. This was in 2017 when she was featured on the N.E.R.D. song Lemon.
You can watch the full music video for Lemon by following the YouTube link below.
Famed Female Rappers
While Rihanna may not be considered a rapper, there are a lot of very successful female rappers out there. In 1988, MC Lyte paved the way for women rappers as the very first female rapper to release her own studio album. Cardi B was the first woman rapper to ever take home the grammy for Rap Album of the Year.
Nicki Minaj was the first female rapper to have 100 entries on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Missy Elliott was one of the female rappers who made a huge change to the hip hop scene with her out there style through her music videos.
British rapper M.I.A. created huge controversy with her song Paper Planes with its release in 2008. The song was featured in the movies Pineapple Express and Slumdog Millionaire. Lizzo is a female rapper who is making a huge impact on the music industry with her new raw style that can be heard in her songs like Truth Hurts.
Even if Rihanna isn’t a rapper, she doesn’t need to be with her unique voice complimenting any rappers music.