Rihanna once confessed she isn’t against BDSM in practice as well as in the lyrics of her songs.

The S&M hitmaker “likes to be spanked” and even keeps whips in the drawer downstairs. She told Rolling Stone back in 2011: “I love feeling like I’m somebody’s girl. I like to be spanked. Being tied up is fun. I like to keep it spontaneous. Sometimes whips and chains can be overly planned – you gotta stop, get the whip from the drawer downstairs. I’d rather have him use his hands.”

She added: “Being submissive in the bedroom is really fun. You get to be a little lady, to have somebody be macho and in charge of your sh**. That’s fun to me.”

According to Daily Mail, she added: “In my normal life, I work hard and take a lot of executive decisions every day, so I prefer to feel the intimacy of someone like the girl. That’s sexy.
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Going more into detail about her sexual preferences with GQ, Rihanna explained: “I like to feel like a woman,” she says. “I have to be in control in every other aspect of my life, so I feel like in a relationship, like I wanted to be able to take a step back and have somebody else take the lead.

“I could absolutely be dominant. But, in general, I’d rather… How do I say this in like a… non-X-rated version? Love makes you go places you probably wouldn’t ever go, had it not been for love. But I think everybody still has their limits.”

She said: “My last memory before going into the hospital is of Rihanna spanking me with a whip. I was already 2cm dilated when I left the show. I closed New York Fashion Week modelling in Rihanna’s Savage x Fenty show in pasties, thigh-highs, stilettos, and not much else.”

But regardless, she says the song S&M isn’t all about sex. Opening up to Vogue about the “metaphorical” meaning behind her hit single, she explained: “The song can be taken very literally, but it’s actually a very metaphorical song. It’s about the love-hate relationship with the media and how sometimes the pain is pleasurable. We feed off it – or I do. And it was a very personal message that I was trying to get across.

“I wanted the video to say that but still play off of the theme of S&M. And I mean, wow, people went crazy. They just saw sex. And when I see that video, I don’t see that at all. I wanted it to be cheeky. There’s no other way to take it.”

It comes as rapper Drake seemed to dismiss Rihanna’s bedroom skills as “average”. In his track Fear of Heights, he appears to reference her latest album, rapping: “I’m anti, I’m anti / Yeah, and the sex was average with you / Yeah I’m anti ‘cuz I had it with you.”

But plenty of fans hit back, branding Drake “misogynistic” for his diss track – while he also appeared to refer to Rihanna’s hubby A$AP Rocky with the line “Better him than me.”