Rihanna appears topless on the cover of the January issue of GQ, but inside the magazine, she reveals more than skin as she discusses how she dealt with the aftermath of Chris Brown's assault and its effect on her latest album, Rated R.

In the interview, she was asked who helped her get through the trauma of the incident. "Nobody," she answered. "Really, just the music. And working. 'Cause I really didn't want to be around anybody, for them to stare at me and stuff, and feel sorry for me. So I just stayed in the house a lot. Then I started to get cabin fever. I was like, I'm going crazy in here."

Although "nobody" helped her cope initially, Rihanna added that friends and colleagues, like Jay-Z and Justin Timberlake, were supportive of her. "Me and Jay-Z, we have a very close relationship, so he was helping me through it and giving me advice and guidance, and just words of support. Like, strength."

Rihanna told the magazine that in Rated R, "you get a gist of my personality," more than in her previous music. Still, she complained, people tend to "misperceive" her. As an example of the vicious rumors she's faced, the interviewer brought up the one that Brown hurt her because she had herpes.

"And it's not true," Rihanna said. "It's a f---ing scar. On my lip. That's there every day of my life."

Unlike many celebrities, Rihanna said she reads the gossip about herself, because she learns something from it. "It's not like it's hard," she explained. "It's more ignorant. At first I was like, 'Are you serious?' First, I thought people were gonna definitely know that that's not ... But when I read it, and I see that people just buy into that. ... Like, the minute they see it, it forms something in their head."