Was Rihanna "Trafficked" To Jay-Z? Singer Jaguar Wright Dishes On Rihanna's Past

This is an opinion piece.

Rihanna – born Robyn Rihanna Fenty – was only 15 when she started a musical group with two other girls in her home country of Barbados.

In 2004, Rihanna's group scored an audition with music producer Evan Rogers after he visited the island. ”The minute Rihanna walked into the room, it was like the other two girls didn’t exist,” Rogers told Entertainment Weekly. While it's unknown how he heard about Rihanna, the outlet noted that Rogers vacationed in Barbados with his wife, Jackie. ”She carried herself like a star even when she was 15. But the killer was when she opened her mouth to sing [Destiny’s Child’s cover of ‘Emotion’]. She was a little rough around the edges, but she had this edge to her voice.”

When she turned 16, Rihanna relocated to the U.S. and moved in with Rogers and his wife with her mother's permission. EW said she was determined to succeed, even if it meant leaving her home in Barbados. In 2005, she recorded the hit songs "Pon de Replay" and "The Last Time," which were sent to Def Jam Recordings. At the time, Jay-Z had been appointed as the record label's CEO. As Rihanna rose to fame, she and Jay-Z became entangled in affair rumors.

Rihanna's discovery journey seems inspiring at first, but Jaguar Wright, a singer and songwriter who worked with Jay-Z in the early 2000s, alleges that we're not being told the real story. According to rumors, the singer was trafficked and "sold" at 16 years old to Jay-Z, and Wright agrees that it does seem that way. She states in an interview video that Rogers "discovered Rihanna at 3 a.m. in the morning in a hotel on the island where she comes from with no parental supervision." Wright claims that Rihanna was a minor who was "put on a private plane" from "one country to another without parental supervision. And she ended up in a boardroom with Mr. Carter without parental supervision."

When the interviewer asked Wright if the rumors about Rihanna being trafficked to America were true, she said, "It's starting to sound that way, doesn't it? Because her daddy ain't shown up till 24 hours later to pick up a half a million dollar check for his daughter's *ss."

In 2016, Rihanna released her eighth album, Anti, featuring a cover image of a little girl with braided hair and a crown as a blindfold holding a balloon. Half of the cover is splattered in red paint resembling blood. The interviewer noted that people should look into Anti more, adding, “That album cover was disturbing – a child bride with a crown over her head and blood smeared on her face!”

Of course, we're not sure what the truth is here, but it is awful that parents would allow their children to leave a country with grown men they don't know. While Jay-Z has yet to address the trafficking allegations, Jonathan Hay, the publicist who claimed that Rihanna and the rapper were having an affair, said he lied as a "publicity stunt" to bring attention to "Pon De Replay." "I was desperate at the time because I wanted to have a hit record,” Hay said, adding, "We were young and stupid."

We've learned much about P. Diddy these past few weeks, and the Epstein-like allegations against him, so people are primed to question if Jay-Z is possibly just as bad.

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