Just hours after Chris Brown released his “Crawl” video, which seemingly takes a remorseful look back at his relationship with Rihanna, the Rated R singer unveiled her own video for her new album’s first single, “Russian Roulette” — a song that also seems inspired by an ill-fated romance. The video, directed by Anthony Mandler, will make its official debut tonight on 20/20.
Rihanna and Chris Brown’s Grammy Weekend: Photos of the days and hours before the infamous fight.
There’s plenty of imagery here that appears to be influenced by Rihanna’s February 8th altercation with Brown: bullets fly through water, blood runs down Rihanna’s chest and, at the 1:43 mark, a speeding car approaches Rihanna while she stands alone at night — a moment that seems to mirror the events immediately following the assault. Much of the video features Rihanna in a padded cell surrounded by armed guards scrutinizing her every move. It’s difficult not to draw a connection between those scenes and the avalanche of unwanted media coverage that has followed the singer in the past months, causing her to tell Glamour magazine, “I went to sleep as Rihanna and woke up as Britney Spears.”
Check out photos of Rihanna, onstage and off.
In last week’s 20/20 interview, Rihanna said of her torrid relationship with Brown, “The more in love we became, the more dangerous we’d become for each other, equally as dangerous.” Those feelings seem to echo the scene that runs throughout the video of Rihanna and her man sitting at a table and passing a loaded gun back and forth in a game of Russian Roulette. In the end, it’s the man who pulls the fatal trigger, as he was the one who took their “dangerous” romance too far.
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Article Source: Rolling Stone : Rock and Roll Daily