For fans who are having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that Rihanna has retired from music, it's time to peel off that band-aid.
RiRi has kept music on the backburner for several years now, only returning to the scene when she's presented with top-tier (and, sometimes, high-paying) opportunities that no major artist would want to turn down. She headlined the Super Bowl LVII Halftime Show last year, where she also revealed she was pregnant with her and A$AP Rocky's second child. And earlier this month, the internet devoured the guerrilla footage of her first full concert in eight years – during the pre-wedding bash for Anant Ambani, son of Asia's richest man Mukesh Ambani, and Radhika Merchant in Jamnagar of India. Rihanna was reportedly paid between $6 million and $9 million for her set, which included performances of her Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hits. 1 'Work', 'Umbrella', 'We Found Love', 'Diamonds' and more.
Just before her Indian pre-wedding concert, she had hinted at cooperation with Rocky – but it was a lip balm. And earlier this week, she starred on its cover Vogue China to celebrate the expansion of Fenty Beauty, one of Rihanna's many business ventures that have transformed the nine-Grammy superstar into a nine-zero net worth mogul. But fans are still holding out for her ninth studio album.
Instead of continuing to hope for R9Its arrival uncertain, it would be easier to accept that the album may never materialize. And while she's never officially announced her retirement, her career moves over the past few years strongly suggest that there's no new music on the horizon.
Rihanna hasn't dropped a full-length project since 2016 INSTEAD, and it's arguably her best album – even Rihanna agrees. “In retrospect, it really is my most brilliant album,” she said to herself 2023 British Vogue cover theme. “It always felt like the most cohesive album I've ever made.” It produced the nine-week Hot 100 No. 1 “Work,” featuring Drake, and two additional top 10 hits with “Needed Me” and “Love on the Brain.” “Work,” “Needed Me” and the other single “Kiss It Better” all earned Grammy nominations, while INSTEAD was up for Best Urban Contemporary album and Best Recording Package of 2017.
The LP debuted at No. 27 on the Billboard 200 after its surprise Tidal release (with just over a day left in the chart's tracking week). after becoming widely available on digital retailers and streaming services, INSTEAD reached No.1 in its second week on the charts, marking her second album to top the chart since 2012 Unforgivable. And at 412 weeks (and counting), INSTEAD is the fourth highest-charting album on the Billboard 200 by a female artist, after Adele's album 21, Lana Del Rey's Born to die and Taylor Swift 1989. The songs from INSTEAD they collectively have 7.2 billion official US on-demand streams, according to Luminate. Rihanna really doesn't need to drop another job, because she's already delivered a classic.
And while INSTEAD set the bar pretty high, that's not to say Rihanna couldn't outdo herself. Artists like SZA and Frank Ocean have proven they can follow up their globally acclaimed sets with equally great or even better albums. But Rihanna has spoken out about the pressure that comes with the prospect of dropping her long-awaited follow-up INSTEAD.
“There is this pressure that I put on myself. That if it's not better than that, then it's not even worth it,” he said British Vogue last year, explaining how her perfectionism got in the way of her creative process. “I realized that if I keep waiting until it's right and perfect and better, maybe it's going to go on forever and maybe it's never going to come out and no, I'm not down about it.” RiRi also told the publication that it would be “ridiculous” if she didn't drop the album in 2023. Now that we're fast approaching the second quarter of 2024, it's hard to determine how Rihanna has since readjusted her timeline for R9.
He has commented on R9 in previous interviews that showed it's not entirely a myth. Inside her 2018 Fashion cover theme, he said he wanted to make it a reggae album. When she covered the magazine the following year, she doubled down on her statement. “I like to think of it as reggae-inspired or reggaesoaked album“, she he said Fashion in 2019. Otherwise, though, Rihanna hasn't publicly revealed any specific details or plans for the album release we've all been waiting for.
She said Entertainment Tonight in February 2022 that her fans would “kill me if they waited this long for a lullaby.” And what did he do? She released a lullaby seven months later with “Lift Me Up”, her first solo single in six years and the lead single from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever soundtrack. While the tribute to late actor Chadwick Boseman wasn't the kind of song fans were expecting (and the kind of song Rihanna joked she wouldn't perform), it proved she still had the juice, commercially and artistically: ” Lift Me Up” debuted at No. 2 on the Hot 100 and became the best radio single of Rihanna's career, debuting at No. 6 on Radio Songs. It also earned nominations for Best Original Song at the 80th Annual Golden Globe Awards and 95th Annual Academy Awards, and Best Song Written for Visual Media at the 66th Annual Grammy Awards.
But a successful soundtrack single — which spent two weeks in the Hot 100 top 10, no mean feat for a Rihanna single — is no indication of the hypothetical era of her new album. Most people seemed to forget that he recorded two songs about Black Panther: Wakanda Forever soundtrack, with “Born Again” closing the set. The song didn't garner the same impressive chart stats or rave reviews as “Lift Me Up,” which prompted many “Rihanna Returns in music» titles. However, her momentary re-emergence, which was followed by other mini-resurfacings like her Super Bowl and pre-wedding appearances, didn't officially mark the end of her eight-year music hiatus.
And a big reason why the “Don't Stop the Music” hitmaker stopped putting out music is because Rihanna was busy checking everything else off her bucket list. A few years ago, a quote from her 2008 With style cover interview resurfaced on X (formerly known as Twitter), where the then-20-year-old singer listed what she wanted to achieve in the next 10 years: “I want to already have my family and have some businesses of my own. A fashion line, a make-up line, and I still want to do what I do with much greater ability – by the grace of God!” Rihanna, now 36, has accomplished everything she set out to do: In the eight years that followed INSTEAD, Rihanna welcomed two sons with Rocky. launched the $1 billion Savage x Fenty underwear brand and the historic Fenty fashion line with LVHM Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (which was put on hold in 2021). and launched her Fenty Beauty and Fenty Skin lines, with the former's success helping her reach billionaire status in 2022.
While fans' initial entry point to Rihanna was her music, she used her music career as an entry point to start other successful businesses. And fans may be disappointed if it seems like artists are neglecting what made them popular in the first place, but what they may not realize or even respect is that artists have other big dreams they want to pursue – and music can to have offered them an avenue to achieve them. Saweetie, another business savvy artiste who has significantly devoted her time to releasing an album and recently explained The pressure surrounding it, she has also opened up about wanting to create a legacy for herself beyond music. Whether artists stop making music altogether to pursue their other passions or drop singles here and there before disappearing again, fans' hopes for their music careers don't always align with the direction the artists take them.
Maybe RiRi will pull a Kendrick and give us the news we've all been waiting for when she does discussions about her retirement. Or maybe INSTEAD it really is her swan song. Either way, Rihanna's career has been nothing short of stellar — and for better or worse, another album isn't going to affect her dramatically.
from our partners at https://www.billboard.com/music/pop/rihanna-r9-album-never-coming-out-1235643201/
