Celebrity Mound

Rihanna’s longtime producer Evan Rogers has spoken out for the first time since the singer’s alleged altercation with Chris Brown to shoot down talk of a new duet between the troubled pair.

“Those were just rumors,”Rogers told Entertainment Weekly. “There’s no duet that’s been recorded other than ["Bad Girl"] that was a bootleg track from months before.”

Rogers, who has worked closely with Rihanna, 21, since discovering her in Barbados in 2003, also suggested that the singer has been listening to the outpouring of advice from the likes of Oprah Winfrey, Tyra Banks and Doctor Phil, since her alleged February 8 incident with Brown, 19, which made headlines around the world.

“I think she’s very aware of everything that’s going on… she watches TV, she goes online,”he told the magazine.

“And I think that it matters to her, but there’s a line that she walks between being human and caring when you hear these kinds of things, and separating your personal life from your professional life.”

Although Rihanna has maintained a low profile since Brown’s alleged attack, Rogers also says his protégée has begun to work on new material in a bid to move on from the incident and reconnect with her fans.

“She just needs to get in [the studio] and make a great album,”noted Rogers. “She’s just getting started now.”

(source)

Oprah Winfrey has a message for pop princess Rihanna, who prosecutors say was beaten to a pulp last month by boyfriend Chris Brown: “He will hit you again.”

Former Manhattan sex-crimes prosecutor Linda Fairstein’s warning is starker: He also could kill you.

Fairstein compared the fist-happy crooner to O.J. Simpson, who repeatedly beat his wife without consequence before she was slain in 1994.

Rihanna’s reported reconciliation with Brown after her Feb. 8 pummeling sparked an outpouring of debate, controversy and motherly advice.

“Love doesn’t hurt,” Winfrey said on her show Friday, while announcing she will dedicate a program this week to discussing domestic violence.
“I want to do a show about it, dedicated to all the Rihannas of the world.”

Speaking directly into the camera, Winfrey said, “If a man hits you once, he will hit you again. He will hit you again.”

Sex crimes expert Fairstein warned Rihanna – as 21-year-old Barbadian singer Robyn Rihanna Fenty is known – that she risks not just another bloodying, but her very life.

“Many of the circumstances in her case were like the early warning signs in the O.J. Simpson case,” Fairstein said.

She pointed to several “red flags” that suggest Rihanna could be in the same danger as Nicole Brown Simpson was 15 years ago, getting hit repeatedly but not pressing charges and then reconciling with the former running back.

The allegation that Chris Brown choked Rihanna while saying “Now I’m really going to kill you” is a particularly bad sign, Fairstein said.

“Choking behavior is a very interesting factor. It’s hands on, face-to-face. It’s a very intimate type of violence,” she said.

New police techniques that assess an offender’s potential lethality based on a list of warning factors should be used in this case, Fairstein said.

The Daily News reported this weekend that Rihanna is torn about whether to testify against Brown next month.

According to a police affidavit, the couple began squabbling after Rihanna found a text message from one of Brown’s ex-girlfriends on his cell phone as they were driving through Hollywood.

Brown then allegedly punched her repeatedly, tried to push her out of the car, bashed her head against the window, bit her ear and fingers, and choked her until she nearly passed out.

Brown, 19, entered no plea last week to two felony charges of assault and making criminal threats. He is out on $50,000 bail and returns to court April 6; his celebrity lawyer, Mark Geragos, is reportedly trying to work out a plea deal.

(source)