When I used to read the Evening News, many ppl here would assume I am paid THOUSANDS like my US or UK counterparts… WRONG! 
I would even try and tell the truth, explain how after the mortgage, insurance and all other bills I’d be lucky if I saw 200 dollars by month-end; typical Bajans would usually mutter how like a white man (You see how much they know, as I am mixed, but what do I know?) to say I have no money when we all KNOW I have! Why am I working then? I’d snarl. So you can have something to do, they calmly reply.
Truth is if I had as much money as those kind of folk thought I had? I’d sit under a coconut tree and wait for a nut to fall and do nothing else! I even remember getting cruel and looking at a car washer in the City (I was vex as he was carrying on about not giving a poor black man some money to wash my old rusty car) and I started hollering I only drove an old car to fool ppl – I really have all of my money under a mattress and not in a bank; I have three mansions and cars for every day of the week to drive only on the east and west coast; and the reason I have money is by not giving to cheap b***hes like YOU! The man agreed with everything I said and told me he knows that is so and when he finds where I am he will burn it and take the money!!
Boy, I can’t even say I want to be as rich as Rihanna, because when I read about her in the London Times, it seems her life can be even more f***ed up than mine with people’s assumptions, both abroad and here –
…the web was soon awash with spite about how she got a record deal thanks only to the casting couch, and how Jay-Z‘s jealous girlfriend, Beyonc?, supposedly pushed her downstairs in a rage. Rihanna, instead of ignoring the rumours, logged on and read them all. ?I wouldn?t know what was being said,? she says, explaining this decision, ?then I?d get asked about them, and I?m like, ?What?? I have to know what?s being said about me, so I know what to expect. So me and my friends will go on an internet gossip site and look this stuff up. But it?s kind of sick how people read it and think this is their way to knowledge, that they know all about you.?Barbados, far from being a refuge from the tittle-tattle, was as bad as anywhere. ?It?s a silly way of Barbadians,? Rihanna sighs. ?They always have to find fault, they?re waiting for you to fall. As much as they enjoy your success, and are like, ?Keep it up?, they have so much pride, it?s easier for them to say, ‘Little whore, you slept with Jay-Z to get signed.? Even when I go back there now, I?ll see girls in the street, walking and snubbing and saying stuff about me.? {Ed’s Note – Like it or not, you have to admit this closet sniping is so true of so many Bajans}
Imagine, I get worried when a body here is angry because I won’t sponsor a project or buy some item as I am the great and filthy-rich Ian Bourne, but Rihanna has not only ppl’s misguided preconceptions but drug addiction in her family –
…her father was addicted to crack cocaine and, when her mother kicked him out, Rihanna took on a quasi-maternal role towards her brothers, and began to have problems with trust, personal space and control…
As for the benefits of success, the greatest, she insists, is the distance it allows her from her upbringing. ?A child shouldn?t have to go through that,? she says, referring to her father?s addiction and the chaos it created (he is now clean). ?Being in the whirlwind, it frustrates you, it angers you, because you?re being tortured and you don?t know why. But now there isn?t resentment but relief, because I understand it. I?m like, ?Thank God I?m not in that any more.??
Even as she removes herself from that kind of sh**e, then she learns there are new “parents” when she attempts to exert her own identity –
When she was promoting her second album, last year?s A Girl Like Me, Rihanna found herself in Paris, and fancied a haircut. Off came the long locks, and she returned to her hotel delighted with the bob she?d reduced them to. ?The minute I got back,? she recalls, ?someone in authority, they were like, ?Yeah, your hair looks good.? But somebody else went, ?You need to put your hair back in ? soon.? ? (How chilling is that, “someone in authority??) In went the extensions, as instructed. ?It just crushed me,? she continues. ?When you?re growing up, 17, 18, that?s when you?re really trying to figure out who you are, and at that point I just wanted to try something outside of the box. But as soon as you come out of your shell, like,This is who I am?, they just shove you back in with, ?No, because this is what we want the box to look like.? You just feel like a tool after a while.?
That part kind of reminded me of how it was to be an Anchor at CBC, they never officially wanted to put it in writing and yet they wanted to even get you to wear certain clothes and talk only to particular ppl even during your off days – I’d say then you must be giving me a salary increase and outlining what a News Anchor does and does NOT do! Then they’d back off yet get angry – punish me by slating me for an early shift to remind me I am only a lowly reporter, yet if it’s a public holiday, they want me to bust up my relaxation and save the day for a 30 minute-bulletin? Um, you don’t pay for my mobile, so my cell is OFF, baby – find someone else! (I could name the folk but then they’d wanna sue, 
let’s just say when a certain educational place recently had a strike from the pupils, their PR was piss-poor and could have shown the students were the villains with a hissy fit! As Dire Straits would say – “Get your Money For Nothing and your chicks for free!“)
Still, my problems seem more within my grasp than the utter crap Rihanna has to endure for being a multi-millionaire, but I hope she invests well and not end up like Leonard Cohen, who is broke in his 70’s due to thieving management while he was a Zen Buddhist monk!
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