And Finally Artist News

Rihanna denies knowledge of publicist who says she’s angry about Tidal album launch

By Andy Malt | Published on Wednesday 20 April 2016

​Rihanna is “upset” about the handling of the release of her latest album ‘Anti’ through Tidal, said publicist Jonathan Hay last week. “Who is Jonathan Hay?” asks Rihanna this week.

“Tidal is lame”, Hay told The Mirror. “It’s embarrassing for Jay-Z. And now to see Kanye West do the Tidal album and his record doesn’t chart, and then Rihanna’s first week, it was a disaster. For Jay-Z to make his artists do this is so bad because this is affecting their legacy”.

“Rihanna nor her team do not know this person and have never worked with him”, a source told Digital Spy this week, when asked for comment. Though they should probably note that Hay seems to largely base his reputation on making her a success. He claims to have worked as a PR rep on her debut single, inventing a rumour that she was having an affair with Jay-Z to get her in the press.

Still, his latest claims appear to be mainly based on looking at the singer’s Twitter account, which doesn’t suggest that they are particularly close. “It’s really crazy and I know for a fact Rihanna is upset about the Tidal thing and you can see it when you go to her Twitter”, he said. “She is a Tidal owner, but on her Twitter to pick up her album, she uses a Google+ app not Tidal. That’s her shooting back because Jay-Z is just making a mistake”.

While it is the case that official first week sales of ‘Anti’ were 460 in the US, 1.4 million downloads were given away for free via a deal with Samsung. The album subsequently went to number one on the Billboard chart. Latest single ‘Work’ also broke Rihanna’s personal record for highest number of consecutive weeks at number one in the US, and helped her pass The Beatles for total number of weeks at number one. So, yeah, it’s gone dead badly.