Billboard ranks Rihanna 3rd for the Best Pop Singers of the 21st century: Singer's greatest achievements explored
Rihanna was ranked third on Billboard Magazine’s Greatest Pop Stars of the 21st Century list, published on November 19, 2024. Rihanna is generally acknowledged as one of the dominating figures in pop of the last decade and a top contributor to pop music.
Despite the 36-year-old’s hiatus from music, she continues to break records. She became the female artist with the most diamond singles and diamond-certified songs on May 30, 2024.
Speaking on Rihanna’s relevance in the music industry, Billboard noted:
"She’s something arguably even more awe-inspiring: a Black Caribbean immigrant woman whose talent, grit, and inimitable charisma made her one of the important and successful pop singers in history. "
The magazine continued:
"She’s Rihanna – there are tens of hundreds of pop stars out there eager to put a modifier in front of her name and fashion her blueprint into something of their own.”
Rihanna's Anti becomes the longest-running album by a black woman on the Billboard 200: Other achievements explored
Riri scored her first hit on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2005 with her debut single Pon De Replay, which landed at number 2 on the chart. The singer ended the one-hit-wonder speculations by releasing SOS in 2006, which became her first number-one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
She gained widespread fame after the release of her 2007 album, Good Girl Gone Bad, which featured the hit song Umbrella and earned her first Grammy Award. She continued her chart-dominating album streak with Rated R and Loud in 2009 and 2010, respectively, with hit singles like Russian Roulette, Hard, and RudeBoy.
Loud album also birthed Only Girl (In The World), her only song to win a Grammy for Best Dance Recording. Rihanna teamed up with Eminem for their first collaboration and released Love The Way You Lie in 2010, which topped the Billboard Hot 100 for six weeks and earned five Grammy nominations.
The singer released We Found Love, her most-streamed song on Spotify, in 2011. We Found Love is arguably the song that defined the 2010s pop era and helped launch Calvin Harris’ career. The song’s music video won a Grammy and VMA, making Riri the first woman to win Video of the Year at the MTV Video Music Awards twice.
Unapologetic album came in 2012 and gave Rihanna her first number-one spot on the Billboard 200. The album also earned the singer her first Best Urban Contemporary Album award at the Grammys.
The Fenty Beauty mogul’s most recent album, Anti, was released in 2016 and became a critical success. It was nominated for 6 Grammy Awards and produced the hit track Man Down, her longest-running Billboard Hot 100 entry at 45 weeks.
Anti is the longest-running album by a black woman on the Billboard 200 at 445 weeks and counting. In 2022, she released a tribute song for Chadwick Boseman and the soundtrack for the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever movie, Lift Me Up, which peaked at number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, earning Academy Award and Grammy Award nominations.
In February 2023, the Diamond hitmaker headlined the Super Bowl halftime show and became the most-watched halftime show in history at the time.
Rihanna is the first female artist to have 10 songs with 1 billion streams on Spotify. The singer has spent the most weeks in the top ten of the Billboard Hot 100 at 360 weeks. The Barbadian singer has the fourth highest number of Hot 100 number-one songs after The Beatles, Mariah Carey, and Elvis Presley.
The bestselling artist's legacy is punctuated by many records and impressive achievements. This underscores her relevance as one of the most distinguished pop singers of the 21st century.
