It's impressive enough that Rihanna recorded "Pon de Replay" at 16, but she already went through rigorous sub-military training five years earlier. Funny enough, she took orders from a fellow Barbadian singer: Shontelle of "T-Shirt" and "Impossible" fame. In fact, Shontelle was Rihanna's drill sergeant. In a 2009 interview with BBC, Shontelle explained, "We were both in cadets together — it wasn't compulsory or anything. But picture me and Rihanna in combat boots and fatigues crawling through mud and things like that."
By "cadets," Shontelle is referring to the Barbados Cadets Corps, a program for Barbadian teens that sets them up for military success. However, the famously rebellious Rihanna wasn't the best at taking orders even back then. In 2015, she told NME, "We'd have to give trouble in order to enjoy this discipline we were getting. And we'd refuse to do push-ups when we were punished. It was a question of: Why just do it? It was so boring to follow the rules." It sounds like Shontelle had her hands full! Either way, despite Rihanna's disobedience, the skills she learned in training would eventually come in handy.
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