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Rihanna earned herself another Vogue magazine cover, and true to form the bajan beauty looks absolutely stunning. In the cover story, Rih Rih goes on the record about taking time off from music, breaking boundaries in a male dominated industry, and Beyoncé.

The interview follows Rihanna during a particularly hectic time in her career as she debuted her new Puma collaboration at New York Fashion Week last month, and prepped for her Drake-assisted performance at the Brit Awards, and the ANTI tour.

Between hoping from Los Angeles to New York and then to London, the 28-year-old singer gets candid on the longstanding rumored Bey rivalry. Rih explains that the two have no beef whatsoever, no matter how the Internet tries to pit them against one another. “Here’s the deal,” she says. “They just get so excited to feast on something that’s negative. Something that’s competitive. Something that’s, you know, a rivalry. And that’s just not what I wake up to. Because I can only do me. And nobody else is going to be able to do that.”

She also talks about the decision to bring Big Sean, The Weeknd on the European leg of her tour, and Travis Scott stateside. “I like to bring people who can get the crowd excited.”

As for the yearlong break between Unapologetic and ANTI, it’s didn’t actually go as planned. The idea was to take time to do whatever she wanted “artistically and creatively,” but that only last “a week,” she admitted. After the paparazzi photographed her heading to a music studio “fans were like, ‘Oh, yes! We’s dropping a single,” she says.

It would take another years or so for ANTI to officially drop. The album is an undoubted display of Rihanna blooming into a new realm of artistry both from a sonic and vocal perspective.

For all intense and purposes, Rihanna is a woman who follows her instincts, which has turned her into a pioneer of sorts. “I always wanted to do what my brothers were doing,” says the “Work” singer. “I always wanted to play the games they played and play rough and wear pants and go outside…Women feel empowered when they can do the things that are supposed to be only for men, you know? It breaks boundaries, it’s liberating, and it’s empowering when you feel like, Well, I can do that, too.”

Hit the flip for photos.

Photo: Vogue

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