Just a week before she's set to perform
at the Grammy Awards, Rihanna is opening up about her
reconciliation with Chris
Brown, four years after he assaulted her. And she's not making any excuses
for the man Brown was then or the man she's dating today.

"I decided it was more important for me to be happy," she says in the issue
of Rolling Stone which hits newsstands on Friday. "I
wasn't going to let anybody's opinion get in the way of that. Even if it's a
mistake, it's my mistake. After being tormented for so many years, being angry
and dark, I'd rather just live my truth and take the backlash. I can handle
it."

Rihanna and Brown have become increasingly more public about their
relationship over the last few months. And, they are not just making it personal
(including shots on Instagram), but also professional. They collaborated on
several eyebrow-raising tracks last year, including her Unapologetic song
"Nobody's
Business," and they were spotted
earlier this month in L.A. recording another track.

Still, she knows how it looks to those who aren't in their inner circle.
"When you add up the pieces from the outside, it's not the cutest puzzle in the
world," Rihanna says. "You see us walking somewhere, driving somewhere, in the
studio, in the club, and you think you know. But it's different now. We don't
have those types of arguments anymore. We talk about sh--. We value each other.
We know exactly what we have now, and we don't want to lose that."

With Brown back in the spotlight for a parking lot scuffle
involving Frank Ocean at a recording studio earlier this week, Rihanna notes
in the interview that Brown is "disgusted" by the way he treated her four years
ago.

"He doesn't have the luxury of f---ing up again," she said. "That's just not
an option. I can't say that nothing else will ever go wrong. But I'm pretty
solid in the knowing that he's disgusted by that. And I wouldn't have gone this
far if I ever thought that was a possibility."

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