Rihanna has nothing to hide

"I'm still going to do what I want to do," she told the magazine. "It's like, one less skeleton in the closet, one less burden, one less secret; now you know that, so you can say what you want about it. I don't have anything to hide."

She continued, "I respect what other people have to say. The bottom line is that everyone thinks differently... It's very hard for me to accept, but I get it. People end up wasting their time on the blogs or whatever, ranting away, and that's all right. I don't hate them for it."

She's talking, of course, about her recent collaborations with Brown after their highly publicised domestic violence incident in 2009. She appeared on Brown's remixed "Turn Up The Music" and he appeared on her "Birthday Cake" reboot, which has been rapidly climbing the charts.

She said of the incident, "I was going through the hardest time of my life. I was angry, sad, confused, torn. I was still in love. And I needed to talk about it."

She channelled much of the emotion into her 2009 album, Rated R, and said the experience was liberating.

"It gave me guns. I was like, 'Well, f*ck.' They know more about me than I want them to know. It's embarrassing. But that was my opening... That was my liberation, my moment of bring it. I wanted people to know who I am. Whatever they take that to be, good or bad, I just want them to know the truth."

The issue of Elle hits newsstands April 17.

Photo: Getty Images/Gareth Cattermole