Rihanna Exclusive: 'He Had No Soul in His Eyes'

Nov. 6, 2009— -- Singer Rihanna is breaking her silence about the night then-boyfriend Chris Brown beat her, telling Diane Sawyer that he had "no soul in his eyes."

"It wasn't the same person that says I love you. It was not those... eyes," she told Sawyer in an exclusive interview. "He had ... no soul in his eyes. Just blank. ...He was clearly blacked out. There was no person when I looked at him."

The February 2009 assault left the 21-year-old battered and bruised, and Brown was sentenced to five years of probation, community labor, and one year of domestic-violence counseling.

"All I kept thinking all the time: When is it going to stop? When it is going to stop?" she said.

After the attack, Rihanna briefly reunited with Brown, but said that she never forgave him.

Click here to watch the full interview.

"I just said to him, 'I can't do this.' I resented him. I resented him so much. And I always put the tough face on and try to, I can do anything face, and just try to play it off. But he knew. He knew it. He kept asking me, 'You hate me, don't you? You hate me,'" she told Sawyer. "And I would lie and I would say, 'No, no. And ... I did hate him. ... Everything about him annoyed me. So finally ... I just said, we can't ... we can't do this. I cannot continue to do this."

Before the dramatic incident, the couple's seemingly fairytale relationship began as a friendship. A 16-year-old Rihanna -- with a growing empire of endorsements, fashion spreads, and a bank account in the multi-millions -- said she was attracted to 15-year-old Brown's personality, humor and charm.

"We were just friends. We always played. So it was ... a good feeling to come out of the adult lifestyle and just, when you're in your room, just be yourself," she said of their year-and-a-half-long romance. "He was definitely my first big love."

But the starlet said that the deeper they fell for one another, the darker their relationship became, bordering on an "obsession."

"To fall in love with your best friend it ... can be scary because the ... the emotions get really, they get the best of you. Like it takes over," she said. "The more in love we became, the more dangerous we became for each other, equally as dangerous."

CLICK HERE for resources and information on how to help stop domestic violence among teens and young women.