Remember where you came from...

We quite liked these pics snapped of Rihanna as she puttered about LA preparing for the Grammies this Sunday.
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We love it not just because of the fab looks on both girls - though we do love the floaty white skirt and quirky touch of the pearls on Rihanna and the plaid shirt in Barbados' national colours on her best friend Melissa.

But the obvious genuine friendship and camraderie evident is good to see. Often celebs end up surrounded by fake friends who can be their downfall. But Rihanna has clearly decided that the small matter of a few thousand miles of sea and land (Melissa studies in Trinidad) is not going to keep her from her real friends and you see Mel around so often, you would be forgiven for thinking she lives in the States.

It brings to mind a comment Rihanna made to men's magazine Complex in 2007 about how she keeps grounded amidst the madness of the entertainment biz.

I'm just not that type to get sucked into bullshit. Everyone has control over what they do as an individual. I'm very sure about who I am as a person and what I'm here to do. I'm here in LA but I am still not here in LA. I come from a very different place and it gives me an advantage.

Good on her.

In other news, LisaRaye McCoy-Misick is still talking... and talking... and talking to essence.com about her two-year marriage to the premier of Turks and Caicos, Michael Misick. And it is pure hilarity, commess, and pappy-show-ness.



On their jet-setting lifestyle:

ESSENCE.com: What sort of things were you interrogated about?

LISARAYE: Our lifestyle. Like, how many times we rented a jet before we purchased our own jet. I told them to my recollection he bought me a jet and we never leased one. Actually, I was going to refurbish the entire jet, which I flew back and forth to Los Angeles in, by adding the family crest in the carpet and some flat screen televisions, and I wouldn't have done that if I was leasing. Also, our credit card and bank statements were examined to figure out where certain monies were coming from, and I signed a loan document for $6 million that I thought was for a house we were building in Los Angeles.ESSENCE.COM: Why would you allow yourself to be placed in the dark on such important personal affairs?
LISARAYE: I don't expect the readers to understand this lifestyle. This lifestyle that I married into was even new for me and on some other level. Things are done differently on this level, so if you have never been there, you can't imagine, because some things just can't be taught. When you are dating or married to a man of Michael's magnitude, you're not sitting there paying the water and electric bills. You have business accountants handle that.

Woman, please. Spare us, do cos yuh talking blasted shite. We got to call a spade a spade. NO PM, Premier or President in de Caribbean ent ballin' like dat. All in T&T, Manning try to ease and lease a private jet through BWEE and people fall in he tail cos they say Trinidad can't afford it. So if big-able T&T that got oil money fuh days can't afford it, how in de hell the premier... not even Prime Minister! of TCI gine afford it? Stuuuupssssssse... And she talking bout how de lifestyle was "on some other level". For damn sure cos it was mock like a $21 bill!

If you can stomach it, the rest of the interview is over on essence.com. In four parts no less - serialising like it is a damn soap opera. Fadda...

Notes on the BET Awards 08 - Islandistas on the red carpet

 Trini-descended islandista Nia Long was absolutely working this plum-coloured dress. I loved everything about it - the rich colour, the daring back with just the two suspender-like straps down to the waist, the draped pockets at the sides, the plunging neckline - it was a winner from every direction. And of course, Nia herself is just fabulous - she really harkens back to the late 90s, early 'noughties' heyday of black romantic cinema featuring all those fabulous buppies - Love Jones, The Best Man, Soul Food ... what happened to those movies anyhow? There was a good run there in the late 90s.

Another islandista by descent, the half-Nevisian Mel B aka Scary Spice was also at the awards and showed off her fabulous body in this close-fitting champagne-coloured dress. As opposed to Nia's dress with its complex structure, this dress is deceptively simple but the gorgeous colour and Mel's great shape is all it needs.

Half-Jamaican and sometime dancehall songstress islandista Alicia Keys had three outfit changes on the night. First was her fuschia dress with the slight origami-like folds on the bodice that she rocked on the red carpet. Didn't so much like how the skirt of this fell - it wasn't quite a bubble shape, not quite straight... hmm. But the colour was definitely pretty.

Next was her performance outfit.

And... well!

Ms. Keys was never rail thin or anything but laaaaaawd gaad ... she a tek fowl pill or what? Since when she had all that bumper? I know her skinny jeans had to be struggling!

And third was her post-performance, acceptance dress - a beige number that would have been blah-ish were it not for the dramatic silver and gold embellishment running across the bodice and along the shoulder. Not everyone's cup of tea but I liked it. I like artistes to wear something a little daring and different. 

I wasn't sure whether to include this last one but I'm feeling generous. Islandista-by-marriage (though maybe not for much longer what with all the scandal facing her hubby, Turks and Caicos Premier Michael Misick) LisaRaye McCoy-Misick wore a great short metallic dress. Quite daring for a red carpet but allowable I think for a music show. And for a woman that is 40-pushing-41, she looks great!

(photo credits: YBF.com)