Operation Misery: Month 8, Week 4, Day 4.

Overnight Rihanna's Diamonds World Tour returned to the United States with a concert in Puerto Rico. As I been saying since this Caribbean and second US leg of the tour was announced the political purpose it to help drive immigration reform through the US Congress.

Apart from highlighting the different US immigration status between Puerto Ricans and other Caribbean islanders this would be achieved by making Rihanna so miserable that she personifies the tired, the poor[sic] and the huddled masses yearning to be free that are synonymous with US' famous Ellis Island immigration station. The idea being that Rihanna's misery would create such a wave of empathy towards all immigrants to the US that it would be impossible to for Congress to refuse to pass immigration reform. It rather goes without saying the Ellis Island actually re-opened to the public on Monday (28/10/13) after a year of repairs following Superstorm Sandy.

Therefore the objective of Rihanna's CIA handlers/Live Nation (the management) was to make Rihanna as miserable and stressed out as possible ahead of the Puerto Rico concert to ensure the most wretched and poor performance possible. Apart from only allowing Rihanna to travel to Puerto Rico in the hours before the concert this was to be achieved primarily by getting Rihanna and members of her core tour party such as her friend Melissa Forde and Gomillion and Leupold (@GnLStudios) who are the sort of in-house paparazzi to be very active on social media (Twitter/Instagram). This would prompt me - in my post-pub state - to tell them all exactly what I thought of them in brutal and sweary detail. This would of course ibncrease the tensions within the group and create waves of discussion and argument amongst Rihanna's huge social media following. If you look back over my Twitter feed (@Sovereignaka) from last night you will see that I went about this task with a great deal of glee and gusto. After all it helped prove my point.

Despite all these efforts Rihanna's actual performance was far from poor or wretched. There was a small issue about how long it took for Rihanna to arrive on stage because with a scheduled show start time of 20:00 (local) you would have expected Rihanna to appear between 21:00 and 21:30. The fact that Rihanna didn't actually take to the stage until between 22:15 and 22:30 would suggest that she was very late. However with the support act also running late and there being little expectation that Rihanna would actually turn up on time no-one seemed to mind that much.

I don't know what sort of stage-set was used for the concert but Rihanna put in an energetic and enthusiastic performance of the standard set-list. Again Rihanna dispensed with the usual costume changes instead wearing one outfit throughout her performance made up of a black leather bra top and black leather trousers. Basically this looked sexy as hell and although the use of black was supposed to symbolise that Rihanna was depressed there was no great political significance to the outfit.

Obviously in a country of some 315 million people the fact Rihanna is performing the occasional concert in front of a few thousand isn't going to be enough to put Rihanna in the US public consciousness to the extent needed to drive through national immigration reform. As such efforts have been made to really boost Rihanna's public profile within the US primarily through the release for radio airplay of "The Monster" Rihanna's collaboration with Eminem. As always with music it would be better for you to listen to this song or even buy it rather then have me analyse it on the Internet. However any analysis of that song will immediately pick up on two things;

Firstly The Monster is quite clearly the strongest work Rihanna has released all year. Apart from highlighting just how weak the "Unapologetic" album which makes up the bulk of the concert set-list actually is this promotes discussion about where Rihanna's career goes once this unfortunate chapter ends. After all Rihanna won't be able to release a new album until at least the autumn of 2014 but she could certainly fit in a summer of collaborations with artists of Eminem's calibre which I suppose makes Eminem something of the lamp by Rihanna's golden door.

Secondly Rihanna's main part in the song is singing the hook; "I'm friends with the monster under my bed. I'm friends with the voices in my head." Years ago someone assigned me the pseudonym "Eminem" and since then the actual Eminem and I have been slowly and gradually driving each other insane. Therefore you could say that I am Eminem's 'Monster.' As such it sounds as though Eminem has got Rihanna to record this song in order to get her to very publicly and very loudly admit that she and I are indeed friends. This creates the obvious question of why we've never met up or why Rihanna never phones or writes. Apart from my performance last night a large part of the reason for this is that Rihanna is afraid that if she does meet up with me the management will punish her in some way most likely through the Inland Revenue Service (IRS) audit.

So I don't know about Rihanna but I'm certainly yearning for the day when she's allowed to breathe free.

12:55 on 30/10/13.