BARBADIAN INTERNATIONAL RECORDING STAR RIHANNA yesterday yielded her high-profile centre stage image to her late grandmother Clara Brathwaite during Brathwaite’s funeral service at the Emmanuel Baptist Church on President Kennedy Drive and again during the committal in the Summit Gardens of Coral Ridge Memorial Gardens.
Guarded by tight foreign and local security, even when Rihanna joined her cousins on the church stage to sing Farewell, I’m Going To Miss You, the emphasis was on “Gran-Gran”, a woman clearly idolized equally by her children and grandchildren.
Scheduled to begin at noon, the service never got started until around 1:30 p.m., shortly after the singer, in a manner of arrival that appeared to have surprised her foreign bodyguards, sped up President Kennedy Drive behind the wheel of a modest dark grey rented Suzuki, honked the horn once and turned into the car park of the Eagle Hall Post Office to park. In the passenger seat was her cousin Noella Alstrom.
The unexpected mode of transport sent members of Rihanna’s security team scampering across the street to assist her in alighting from the vehicle.
