KIMU

Here is the world premiere of Rihanna’s tongue-in-cheek video for S&M, directed by Rihanna herself with the support of Melina Matsoukas. Look out for the cameo appearance from Perez Hilton as Ri Ri’s gimp.

There have been a lot of questions as to why Perez is featured in the video for S&M, it boils down to smart marketing – and the same reason why he was featured in the opening credits of Britney Spears’ Circus tour. Perez wrote some rather scathing posts when Rihanna’s Rated R album launched in 2009. With (=) 7 millions readers per month, there is no doubt that this is somewhat damaging. By including him in the video, it is damage control and what can almost be regarded as a traditional media partnership. He is guaranteed to talk positively about the video (not that he wouldn’t – we now know that he loves a “happy” Ri Ri), and any future ventures from Rihanna for the foreseeable future. I mean, look how good he has been to Britney since Circus, and we KNOW that he didn’t have to be. The question is, since is sidelining of his “bad blogger self” in Autumn 2010, will this make him less of an industry threat in the future? We’ll have to wait and see.