LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – R&B singer Rihanna broke her silence last week about the night her ex-boyfriend Chris Brown attacked her, saying he had bitten her, put her in a headlock and left her bleeding and swollen.
“It wasn’t the same person that says ‘I love you.’ It was not those…eyes,” Rihanna, 21, told Diane Sawyer in an interview on ABC television’s “Good Morning America” show.
“He had…no soul in his eyes. Just blank…He was clearly blacked out. There was no person when I looked at him,” she said.
Brown, 20, singer of hits like “Kiss, Kiss,” was sentenced to five years probation and 180 hours of community service for the assault in February on the eve of the Grammy Awards.
He has apologized publicly and although the pair briefly reunited, Rihanna said she now has “no desire at all to be with him.”
Rihanna said the attacks started with an argument over a text message Brown received while they were driving home from an industry party.
“I couldn’t take it that he kept lying to me. And he couldn’t take it that I wouldn’t drop it. And…it was ugly,” she told Sawyer.
She acknowledged police reports that Brown bit her, put her in a head lock until she had trouble breathing, and punched her several times in the eye.
“I fended him off with my feet…but it was not like, it was not like a fight with each other. I just…I really just wanted it to stop,” she said.
Her screams prompted a passer-by to call the police.
“I was bleeding, I was swollen in the face,” she said. “So there was no way of me getting home, except for, my next option was to get out of the car and walk. Start walking in a gown, in a bloody face. So I really don’t know what my plan was.”
Rihanna said although her wounds had long healed, she had flashbacks and scars inside.
“The thing that men don’t realize when they hit a woman, it’s…the face, the broken arm, the black eye, it’s going to heal. That’s not the problem. It’s the scar inside.
“You flashback…you…you remember all the time. It comes back to you whether you like it or not. And it’s painful. So I don’t think he understood that,” she said.
Meanwhile, Rihanna also told MTV News on Monday that she ushered in a “new era” with her performance in Los Angeles – joining Jay-Z to sing “Run This Town” and then singing her Young Jeezy-assisted single “Hard.”
“There are a lot of butterflies, a lot of excitement,” Rihanna said about her return to music. “I’m anxious. Like, I can’t wait. But you’re always nervous, because you’re about to go do something big. It’s a new thing, a new era. But I’m not scared. I’m just really excited. I just can’t wait to start.
“I kept thinking, ‘Why the hell am I so nervous?’ And I couldn’t figure it out. But then I knew why: It was the first time performing one of my new songs. But it was fun. It was so exciting. The energy was awesome.”
In an interview posted by the AP on Tuesday, Rihanna said recording songs on her new album was such an emotional experience that she sometimes had to leave the studio to prevent herself from breaking down.
“I walked out the studio a few times just trying not to be in tears,” she said about recording her fourth studio album.
“It was about me, and so much so that songs got really personal to the point where it took three months for me to start recording it because it was too deep for me to even listen to,” she said.
The CD comes nine months after the assault.
Rihanna said recording allowed her an outlet to express her true feelings.
“I got to vent because I didn’t really talk a lot. I didn’t talk to a lot of people about anything I was feeling. I just did it on the record,” she said.
Following the attack, Rihanna said she was sick of sitting at home and decided to head to the studio.
“I was tired of just being in the house and I just felt like I was wasting so much time and just being lackadaisical, so I just wanted to work again and we started recording,” she said. “The recording experience was different because it was from a completely new mind space, from a different perspective. Usually I was thinking of fun stories, things to talk about, different topics that might be cool, but this time is really about my life.”
She also said she’s excited for fans to hear a song called “Stupid In Love.”
“You’re blinded by love, love is blind and sometimes you can’t see it coming and it’s just coming to the realization of the state of a relationship and just saying, ‘This is not what I like. It doesn’t make me happy,’“ she said.
Rihanna credits this album with helping her look forward instead of dwelling in past.
“Venting is a part of moving on, like you have to get it out no matter what, and this album for me helped me do that — being in the studio, writing, working with producers and songwriters, making music,” she said. “It made it even more special that it came from my heart and my real… my feelings, the exact way I felt.”