Rihanna

In 2004, Jay-Z signed Rihanna to his Def Jam label, but found that the Barbados beauty was consistently dismissed as a Caribbean copy of his girlfriend, Beyoncé.

Although she released two hit albums in eight months, it wasn't until Rihanna chopped her hair and released 2007's Good Girl Gone Bad, that she bypassed any comparisons. After her summer anthem, "Umbrella," topped the charts, she became a CoverGirl, won her first Grammy, and began dating singer Chris Brown.

But the fairy tale was shattered when Brown beat her in February 2009, resulting in the R&B singer pleading guilty to felony assault. Breaking her silence, Rihanna said, "This is a memory you don't want to ever have again."

The singer, who rebounded with baseball player Matt Kemp, has since returned to music with her Grammy-lauded album Loud (2010), 2011's hit-boasting LB Talk That Talk and 2012's Unapologetic, plus her Diamonds world tour in 2013.