Rihanna said, “It’s going to be where my artistry deserves to be right now. I feel like I’ve finally cracked it.”
Rihanna’s last album, Anti, was released in 2016. (Photo Credit: X)
Rihanna has kept fans eagerly awaiting her ninth studio album which is still untitled but often referred to by fans as R9. It has been nearly a decade since she released her chart-topping album Anti in 2016. In a recent interview, Rihanna finally shared some insights into the long-awaited album, stating it will be something that nobody has expected before.
In an interview with Harper’s Bazaar, Rihanna, 37, revealed that she has been working on the album for the past eight years but it took this long for her to fully understand what she wanted it to sound like. “Every time I was just like, ‘No, it’s not me. It’s not right. It’s not matching my growth. It’s not matching my evolution. I can’t do this. I can’t stand by this. I can’t perform this for a year on tour,'” she said.
The singer said that after such a long break from music, the next album needed to be special. “After a while, I looked at it, and I was like, this much time away from music needs to count for the next thing everyone hears. It has to count. It has to matter. I have to show them the worth in the wait,” she said.
As for what the album will actually sound like, Rihanna was quick to shut down speculation about it being a reggae project. “Way off! There’s no genre now. That’s why I waited. I cannot put up anything mediocre. After waiting eight years, you might as well just wait some more,” the Diamonds singer said.
While she didn’t go into detail about the album, the Umbrella artist did express a deep sense of optimism about it. “This feels right. It feels like it digs right into where I need to be, and I want this. This body needs to come out, and I’m ready to go there,” she shared.
“And it’s not going to be commercial or radio digestible. It’s going to be where my artistry deserves to be right now. I feel like I’ve finally cracked it, girl!” the nine-time Grammy winner added.
For Rihanna – who shares two sons, RZA (2) and Riot (18 months), with partner A$AP Rocky – working on this album “is becoming my new freedom, because when I’m in the studio, I know that my time away from my kids is to blossom something that hasn’t been watered in eight years.”
“I’ve been in the studio the whole eight years. But it didn’t hit me. I was searching for it. I went through phases of what I wanted to do. ‘This kind of album, not that album.’ I know it’s not going to be anything that anybody expects,” the singer explained.
