IN THE ROUGH: Rihanna’s strange kind of fame. BY SASHA FRERE-JONES

ABSTRACT: POP MUSIC about Rihanna. Everything that the twenty-four-year-old R. & B. star Rihanna does comes with something extra: enormous numbers, awkward questions, unconfirmed stories, unclaimed responsibilities. Rihanna has sold more digital copies of her work than any other artist, including the Beatles. Her current No. 1 single, “Diamonds,” off her seventh album, “Unapologetic,” is her tenth. But all her accomplishments are sometimes overshadowed by her relationship with Chris Brown. Describes Brown’s assault on her, and its aftermath. It’s very hard to find a consistent Rihanna in any of her music. She has been, wisely, a carpetbagger from the beginning. Her voice isn’t particularly compelling; it conveys not emotion, but, rather, a position of powerful detachment. There’s so much Auto-Tune applied to her voice that it’s hard to say how she does or doesn’t sing. What she has done to remain a pop star is to choose very well-written songs.