Rihanna has “finally cracked” her highly anticipated next album — and will release it at precisely the right time.
“There’s no genre now. That’s why I waited. 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,” Rihanna, 37, told Harper’s Bazaar in a profile published Saturday, February 22. “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.”
She added, “I have to show them the worth in the wait. I cannot put up anything mediocre. After waiting eight years, you might as well just wait some more.”
Rihanna’s fans have been clamoring for an update on R9 — their nickname for the singer’s next album — for years. According to the pop star, she needed all the pieces of the LP to fall into place before proceeding.
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“This feels right. It feels like it digs right into where I need to be, and I want this,” Rihanna stressed. “This body needs to come out, and I’m ready to go there. This 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.”
Rihanna, who shares sons RZA and Riot with partner ASAP Rocky, further confirmed that she’s “been in the studio the whole eight years” trying to brainstorm the album’s direction.
“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,” she recalled. “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!”
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While Rihanna promises that R9 will eventually be released, her top priority is her family.
“Every decision I make revolves around them, but everything that I do that I love robs me from them,” the Fenty founder told Harper’s Bazaar of her young sons. “I have a weird resentment with the things that I love. You almost feel like something is always suffering for you to show up somewhere. And even when you show up there, it’s not 100 percent because there’s something else on the wheel. It’s actually given me a lot more self-guilt.”
She concluded, “I don’t like letting people down, but I also know that most of that is me letting myself down, which means something has to change, but everything is on the wheel at all times. I have to keep reminding myself that I asked for this, I love this. I try to figure out a balance so that I can feel fulfilled when I show up to something, so I can feel I don’t have any guilt.”
