Though it’s just a few months since Rihanna completed her most recent world tour last year, the pop singer says she’ll go on yet another trek across the world in 2013.

Speaking with reporter Kevin Hughes of UK radio station Capital FM, Rihanna said she is planning the tour to be her most elaborate yet.

“We’re going to be going on tour next year,” she said. “So this year we’re spending out time planning to make sure it’s bigger than anything we’ve done and something more impactful, maybe something different, so my fans can get excited about it.”

As for exact details, she said they haven’t been worked out just yet.

“Too early to talk!” she added.

Rihanna also spoke of a few additional projects that she is working on. She has made a video with Drake for his song “Take Care,” which she contributed vocals to on the Canadian singer’s much hyped recent album of the same name. Rihanna called the video “beautiful” and said it was like nothing else that Drake has ever done.

She also said that a long-rumored collaboration between her and Katy Perry will “definitely” be happening, but did not add any exact timeline.

Rihanna’s last world tour was 2011’s Loud tour, which supported her most recent album, Talk that Talk. That album, her sixth studio record, was released in November of last year. The album debuted at number three on the Billboard 200 album chart, and has since gone on to sell over three-quarters of a million copies since its release.

Two singles preceded the release of the album – “We Found Love” and “You Da One.” The former became Rihanna’s 11^th number one U.S. single, which ties her for third with Whitney Houston for the female artist with the most number one singles. The two are behind only Madonna and Mariah Carey.

Though it has only been two weeks since singer Whitney Houston’s untimely death, already there are rumors that a biopic about her life will be made. According to Entertainment Weekly and other sources, record producer Clive Davis, who served as Houston’s mentor and brought her career to prominence, is said to be putting the movie together.

Of course, this also means that rumors have started circulating as to who will play the troubled with star, and various sources report that Rihanna and Jennifer Hudson currently are leading the pack. Other names mentioned in reports are Vivica A. Fox and former “American Idol” winner Jordin Sparks. Will Smith’s daughter Willow has been mentioned as a possible actress to portray a young Houston.

At this points, no official announcement has been made about a film or its casting.

Rihanna will make her acting debut later this year in Battleship. The film is scheduled to be released in May, and Rihanna will act alongside Liam Neeson, Alexander Skarsgard and Taylor Kitsch.

Jennifer Hudson, also an “American Idol” alum, has been building her acting credits since 2006. That year, she won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Dreamgirls, which marked her acting debut.

Whitney Houston died on February 11 of this year in a Beverly Hills Hotel Room. No official cause of death has yet been released, though Houston was long known for her troubled personal life and struggle with drugs.

Houston herself became known as an actress as well as a singer when she starred in 1992’s “The Bodyguard.” The soundtrack to that movie went on to win the Album of the Year Grammy Award in 1994. Houston’s cover of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You,” featured on the soundtrack, became the best selling single of all time by a female artist.

Since 2005, Rihanna has released a new album just about every year. According to the pop star, this year won’t be any different.

Despite the fact that it’s been less than a year since “Loud,” her latest mega-selling album was released, or that she has been quite busy filming movies based on favorite children board games, touring the world, modeling underpants and issuing orders for any Ronald McDonald wig under the sun to be fetched for her, it appears the singer has still managed to find the time to finish recording a new LP.

With such a packed and impressive schedule, one can only assume other areas in her life might be neglected, like her being able to send tweets in coherent English. However on Thursday she was able to send a couple headline-grabbing messages via Twitter.

When one asked asked when her next album would be out, Rihanna answered this fall.

Although it isn’t clear when the followup to “Loud” will be out, another reply from Rihanna on Twitter did open some speculation up about the direction her new record might take. Rihanna wrote, you know since “Rated R” I’ve been loving Dubstep, when she was responding to a question from a fan about her new album.

This summer, MTV News report that Rihanna had been working with Verse Simmonds, the Man Down producer. Simmonds in July said Rihanna was close to finishing the record.

Although there is only one week left for “The Voice,” Cee Lo Green, who is one of the coaches on the show, says that’s one of his reasons for quitting the Loud tour he has been performing with Rihanna.

The New York times reported that Green has announced he is dropping out of the summer tour partially due to his commitments to the reality singing competition on NBC, but also to prepare a book and new album.

A spokesperson for Green said Cee Lo always put one hundred percent effort into his work. The time commitment and requirements for “The Voice,” in addition to his upcoming book and headed back to the recording studio, has him feeling he wouldn’t be able to give his fans what they deserve in the shows.

The announcement from Green came after a Twitter fight that became very public that Green and one of the local music critics had. After getting a negative review from the critic for the show, Green lashed back. He thought the critic was a man and some found his response homophobic. Subsequently, he apologized for offending anybody, but didn’t apologize for defending his performance or himself.

In early June, Green joined the tour with Rihanna, which has performances scheduled in 17 Canadian and U.S. cities at least through July.

‘Man Down’, Rihanna’s new video, is causing uproar among conservative TV and radio critics and parents. We all know she has become rebellious and the antithesis of a role model after she got beaten up by former boyfriend and R&B star Chris Brown, but many uptight viewers who have seen the video think that the Grammy winner is just taking things too far.

In the radio show ‘Rolling with Nick Cannon’ airing over 92.3 NOW, co-host Sarah Lee explains what sprung the controversy. “They want her to be a sweet pop-y girl that did the umbrella song, but that’s not who she is anymore.”

With the video’s suggestive and violent images, plus the song’s explicit lyrics (“I just shot a man down in Central Station” and “I took his heart when I pulled up that gun” among others), the question now arises whether the character the singer portrayed in the video had justifiable reasons to shoot the man who raped her or if she was asking to be raped in the first place (Rihanna was somewhat scantily clad while gyrating sexily on the dance floor and flirting with every guy).

A woman from New York called the show and commented, “Any woman should wear whatever she wants, she could be naked and it doesn’t give any man the right to touch her.” But Lee sees it differently, “This caller is saying if you walk outside nobody should touch you, I totally disagree. To me it was just bad judgment on her part. She’s a role model, a great role model. Since the Chris Brown incident she’s gone on the dark side and a lot of parents are upset.”

But that viewpoint raises another significant question; does Rihanna even want to be a role model? The answer lies in her Twitter post today, “I’m a 23 year old rockstar with NO KIDS! What’s up with everybody wantin’ me to be a parent? I’m just a girl, I can only be your/our voice!”

And BET has her back in all of this and won’t be pulling the plug off the video anytime, despite calls and petitions from the Parents Television Council and music video watch group Industry Ears. Both groups have released a joint statement saying, “Man Down is an inexcusable, shock-only, shoot-and-kill theme song. In my 30 years of viewing BET, I have never witnessed such a cold, calculated execution of murder in primetime.”

So whether these conservatives are just over-reacting or Rihanna is really being sexually and violently over the top, is still up for debate.

Worldwide chart topper Rihanna is saving a little girl’s life, or at least she’s trying to after having her blood and bone marrow screened and calling out on some of her friends and fans to the same.

“Can you help me find a lifesaver for baby Ayelet and other patients? Get swabbed (tested) because maybe You can save a life!” was Rihanna’s tweet in an effort to gather more bone marrow donors for Ayelet Galena, a one-year old patient fighting for dear life after being diagnosed with a rare bone marrow disorder, leaving with her a severely compromised immune system.

Aside from RiRi, 50 Cent also had himself screened to see if he could be lined up among the much needed donors for Baby Ayelet. Leighton Meester, best known as Blair in the CW series ‘Gossip Girl’, rapper and producer Pharrell Williams and rap metal act Linkin Park were all influenced by the singers’ selflessness that they also decided to do the same and encouraged their own fans and friends to partake in the act as well.

Rihanna has always been known to have a soft spot for young ailing patients. In 2009, she, along with President Barack Obama, helped six-year old leukemia patient Jasmina Anema. She did get the bone marrow transplant she needed within the same year, but still lost her fight for life after contracting pneumonia.

The ‘S&M’ singer expressed her grief over Jasmina’s death via a statement. “I am incredibly heartbroken that Jasmina has passed away. She was such a brave and special child. She showed me more strength and spirit that many adults I have met. I feel blessed that I was able to have her in my life and know that through her example, she has saved many lives. She was truly an angel on earth.”

Rihanna is on a roll these days. Not only is her new single, ‘California King Bed’, climbing up the charts, and so is the album (‘Loud’) where the hit track came from, but she has now crossed over to mainstream flicks, starring in the upcoming Peter Berg action film ‘Battleship’ and even doing her own stunts, because her stunt double just won’t do.

“She dove off the deck, slammed herself on a metal grate, grabbed an actor and dragged him back to the raft. Then she looked up at me and had this big smile on her face – she did it all better than the stuntwoman! There’s definitely not a confidence issue with Rihanna,” a very impressed Peter Berg explained.

But the director didn’t let the rebellious Grammy winning singer have it easy. Speaking to Cosmopolitan, RiRi tells the magazine that she had to beg him to allow her to be practically slammed and shoved in those scenes that she did.

“I kept going, ‘Put me in there!’ For me, it’s tougher to be vulnerable than to be tough. The only thing I’m secretly terrified of is childbirth!” Well, that’s no secret now.

‘Battleship’ opens in cinemas in 2012.

Justin Bieber, Bruno Mars, Lady Gaga, Eminem and Rihanna are the leading finalists for Billboard’s 2011 Music Awards. They were announced on April 13 during a Las Vegas press conference.

The leading finalist is Rihanna with 18 award categories. They include Top Dance/Electronic Artist, Top R&B Artist, Top Female Artist and Top Hot 100 Artist. Rihanna’s chart-topping track “Love the Way You Lie” with Eminem placed her as a finalist in six of the song categories.

Eminem, meanwhile, is included in 16 award categories as a finalist, including Top Rap Artist, Top Male Artist and Top Billboard 200 Artist.

Lady Gaga is next with 12 category finalist placements. Three of her releases are competing in the Top Dance/Electronic Album: “The Remix,” “The Fame Monster” and “The Fame.”

Justin Bieber and Bruno Mars, the pop heart throbs, are each competing in 11 categories. They will face off in the Top Male Artist and Top New Artist categories. Other contenders for Top New Artist are Taio Cruz, Nicki Minaj and Ke$sha. Taio Cruz’ song “Dynamite” has been nominated for five awards, which includes Top Hot 100 Song.

Billboard’s Music Awards show will take place in Las Vegas at the MGM Grand Garden Arena on Sunday May 22 to announce the winners. The show will air on ABC from 8-11 pm ET and PT. To purchase tickets visit Ticketmaster.com.

A holistic view of artist performance is taken by Billboard’s Music Awards. It is based on musical-finalists’ interactions with the fans. Winners are determined from looking at streaming and social activity as well as chart performance chronicled on Billboard.com and Billboard Magazine during the February 28, 2010 through March 1, 2011 eligibility period.

The basis for Billboard’s 46 award categories are from measures that are provided by their data partners. They include Nielsen SoundScan sales data, radio airplay that Nielsen BDS monitors, streaming data that Neilsen BDS and Tubemogul measures, social media consumption measured by Next Big Sound, as well as tour grosses that Billboard Boxscore tracks.

In an effort to draw attention to the water deficit worldwide, Rihanna is allowing UNICEF to use her likeness in a new advertising spot to promote its Tap Project. Rihanna, known for her song, “What’s My Name” is shown drinking from a glass filled with tap water while an announcer states, “Water so hot it could only come from Rihanna’s faucet.”

Rihanna is one in a long line of famous people whose faces have graced the sides of tap water bottles. Others include Selena Gomez of the Disney Channel; Taylor Swift, country singer; and Adrien Grenier, star of “Entourage.” Fans can enter a contest to win one of these limited edition bottles by donating $5 to the project.

The Tap Project was established in 2007 in New York City. It is designed to bring attention to the deficit of clean drinking water for nearly 900 billion people throughout the entire world. It also aims to collect money to fund clean water initiatives on a worldwide basis. Based on information from UNICEF, infections caused by contaminated water are the second-leading reason why kids all over the world die.

B. Akerland, stylist for Rolling Stone, had not styled Rihanna prior to the shoot for the most recent edition of the magazine. However, she knew instantly what she had to do. She said to Rolling Stone, “Her people told me the direction that we were going was if Kid Rock and Rihanna had a baby. So, I tried to think of things she hadn’t done. And everyone kept on saying super sexy, super sexy, and I’m like, okay, I’ll give you sexy.”

The outcome was that Rihanna was photographed in a pair of shredded Levi’s shorts that barely cover her body, a white tank top, and a red bandanna she wears as a bracelet. Of course, the shorts are the main draw. Popdust said, “Rihanna is sporting a revolutionary booty-flaunting garment that’s part shorts, part apron, and part nothing.”

The shorts were designed for Akerlund by Michael Schmidt, a designer that often works with her on assignments. Akerlund stated, “I like everything that sparkles, so I was just trying to think of, like, what can we do that’s not crystals, because we’ve done a lot of it, and then I was trying to come up with like, what is the hottest short on the planet, basically. And then we came up with this concept of photo digitizing on top of metal mesh. Akerlund has styled Lady Gaga, Kate Moss, Fergie, and Madonna, among others.

Prior to the photographing session, Akerland did not have the opportunity to see if the shorts even fit. Akerland said, “I was just looking at the pictures online of like, her bum. I was just trying to figure out how she liked her shorts, and how they would end and cut.”

It took 7 days to make the shorts and they could not be altered once they were completed due to the details that were incorporated into the design. Akerland stated, “I just kept on saying, go shorter, go shorter. I knew we couldn’t go much shorter, but I think the end result was just right.”