Rihanna has criticised artists who use excessive product placement in their music videos.

The singer, who launched her latest album 'Rated R' with help from Nokia, admitted that the heavy use of product placement can ruin music videos.

She told NME: "I don’t like things to be so commercial. I hate product placement in my videos. Videos should just tell the story of the song. With product placement it becomes this big ad campaign. I just don't like that. Sometimes we have to, for whatever political reason, but it's never my first choice."

The 22-year-old also revealed that when recording her previous album, 'Good Girl Gone Bad', her label was unaware of what she was recording in the studio. She said: "After my first two albums I just said, ‘I’m ready to do it my way, completely. So a few of us went into the studio, cut my hair, dyed it black. The label hadn’t seen anything, they didn’t know what was going on. The mystique I have kept has been because I don’t say a lot. There are a lot of rumours about me, every day it’s something new." She explained, “I guess by not replying people never know what’s true and they never know what’s not true. So that kinda leaves them wondering - they see me, but they never know what’s in my mind."