Rihanna Says Her New Album Should Be Released ‘This Year’
"I want it to be this year," Rihanna said during a cover story interview with British Vogue.
Rihanna fans have been eagerly waiting for the release of her next album, which has been many years in the making. Now, following her show-stopping performance at the Super Bowl, the singer has finally given them an update on the much-anticipated project.
“I want it to be this year,” Rihanna said during a cover story interview with British Vogue. “Like, honestly, it would be absurd if it’s not this year. But I just want to have fun. I just want to make music and make videos.”
The singer also emphasized the importance of having the right background music with the visuals, stating, “I can’t just go shoot a video to me talking.”
Rihanna continued to explain, in part, why it’s taken so long for her to release anything new. “There’s this pressure that I put on myself. That if it’s not better than that, then it is not even worth it,” she said.
She added that she “realized that if I keep waiting until this feels right and perfect and better, maybe it’s going to keep taking forever, and maybe it’ll never come out, and no, I’m not down to that.” Rihanna continued by stating that she wants “to play. And by play, I mean I have my ideas in my head, but I can’t say them out loud yet.”
The Super Bowl halftime show headliner has been keeping fans waiting for new music for more than half a decade now.
It’s been over seven years since the release of her last album, Anti, which dropped in 2016. That span of time wouldn’t be shocking for every artist, but it broke with her usual cadence. For much of her career, Rihanna seemingly never stopped working, and she put out an album almost every year for quite some time.
During her hiatus (of sorts), Rihanna has featured on a handful of tracks fronted by other artists, such as Kendrick Lamar (“Loyalty”) and DJ Khaled (“Wild Thoughts”), but she has largely been quiet on the music front. Rihanna also casually became a billionaire, as she shifted her focus to developing her Fenty Beauty line and Savage Fenty clothing brand, which have both become massively successful businesses.
Rihanna revealed at a press conference around her Super Bowl halftime show that she was feeling open to exploring, discovering, and creating. “Things that are new, things that are different, things that are off, weird, might not ever make sense to my fans, the people that know the music that I’ve put out,” she commented.
The superstar did make a highly-anticipated return to music in late 2022 with two songs, “Lift Me Up” and “Born Again,” which were both created for the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever soundtrack.
The former cut is currently nominated for Best Original Song at the Academy Awards, with RiRi earning her first Oscar nom as a songwriter.
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