HAPPY HOLIDAYS

For Rihanna, Every Day Is 4/20

by Steph Eckardt
Updated: 
Originally Published: 

Rihanna smoking
Photo by Christopher Polk via Getty Images

Most celebrities might recoil from the public eye when a photographer catches them rolling a blunt on the plateau of their bodyguard’s bald head. But Rihanna, who once spent most of one sweaty day at Coachella riding her beefy protector’s shoulders, is definitely not most celebrities. Instead, she montaged the ostensibly incriminating images and posted them on her Instagram, where she’s consistently proved herself worthy of her handle: @badgalriri.

That was hardly the only time that Rihanna’s account has gone a little green over the last few years. (Particularly since that Halloween when she dressed up as Mary Jane.) Fenty Beauty plugs aside, by the looks of her Instagram, every time Rihanna’s put down her favorite accessory, that ever-present glass of wine, she’s picked up a blunt. (No surprise, given that you can find her puffing away in her videos for “Talk That Talk” and “BBHMM.”)

Blunt rolling and clouds of smoke are motifs that recur throughout Rihanna’s entire artistic oeuvre, from the Talk That Talk album cover to the artwork for her single “Unapologetic.” Spreading the gospel, she’s also brought that visual along with her to appear in magazines like The Fader and CR Fashion Book, styled in the latter as Marie Antoinette.

Still, Rihanna is committed to variety. Each photo of Rihanna smoking a blunt also serves as an illustrious illustration of a different form of multitasking. She’s blazed it while swimming, fishing, getting ready to party with Dior—and, as you can see below, much, much more.

Lately, though, Rihanna’s been hard at work cooking up quite a different (read: more virtuous) type of variety: the endless shades required to make a truly inclusive cosmetics company. Given the paucity of blunts in the photos she’s posted since last 4/20, we can only hope that in between changing the world, she’s giving herself an occasional break—especially on a holiday. As for the rest of us, well, get ready to get inspired; even without another year’s worth of contributions, she’s already made sure there’s no shortage of Instagrams featuring Rihanna and a blunt.

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