Rihanna Confirms Turning Down Super Bowl Deal: “I Just Couldn’t Be a Sellout”

Last year, rumors swirled that Rihanna turned down performing at the Super Bowl, and she has now confirmed. While talking about politics with Vogue, Rihanna touched on why she declined.

While speaking with Vogue, Rihanna was asked if she would want to speak on politics. She replied “How deep you wanna get?” Journalist Abby Aguirre made a clean transition into speaking on the Super Bowl, and not performing.

“I couldn’t dare do that,” Rihanna said. “For what? Who gains from that? Not my people. I just couldn’t be a sellout. I couldn’t be an enabler. There’s things within that organization that I do not agree with at all, and I was not about to go and be of service to them in any way.”

She also touched on gun reform, and the El Paso mass shooting. “It is devastating,” she says. “People are being murdered by war weapons that they legally purchase. This is just not normal. That should never, ever be normal. And the fact that it’s classified as something different because of the color of their skin? It’s a slap in the face. It’s completely racist.”

She continues, “put an Arab man with that same weapon in that same Walmart and there is no way that Trump would sit there and address it publicly as a mental health problem. The most mentally ill human being in America right now seems to be the president.”