Last year came and went without a new Rihanna album, but in her recent Vogue cover interview the Bajan pop-sensation promised she’s “very aggressively working on music.”
That might be welcome news for some, but not for her army of stans. The Navy has waited four long years since 2016’s ANTI. All the while, Rihanna has taken great pleasure in teasing the project, dubbed R9.
While there’s no official intel on the project, there are a lot of clues. And so to make the wait a little easier, we’ve compiled everything we think we know about RiRi’s ninth studio album.
Keep scrolling for everything you need to know about Rihanna’s upcoming album.
Rihanna’s new album release date
Rihanna remains maddeningly vague about the release date, which she’s been teasing since 2018. At times, she has suggested that R9 is complete and that the drop is imminent, while at other times it seems as though she’s still hard at work.
In January of last year, a first teaser showed a glitter-filtered RiRi at work in the studio, along with a two-second melody that had fans believing the album was arriving in 2019. That didn’t happen.
But as the year came to an end, Rihanna posted a video to Instagram, with the captions “me listening to R9 by myself and refusing to release it.”
Then, last month she teased the drop to Entertainment Tonight. When asked when (and if) her rumored album, R9, will drop she answered “Dot. Dot. Dot. To be continued,” before admitting that she gets a kick out of teasing those who ask. “I like to antagonize my fans a little bit. Well, they antagonize me, too! So, they get it right back.”
Most recently she told British Vogue, “I can’t say when I’m going to drop. But I am very aggressively working on music.” Suggesting that it isn’t finished after all and there’s an even longer wait than we feared.
What will the album sound like?
In an interview with Vogue, for the publication’s November 2019 issue, Rihanna confirmed that R9 would be reggae-inspired. She reiterated this in her most recent Vogue interview, too.
“I like to look at it as a reggae-inspired or reggae-infused album,” she said. “It’s not gonna be typical of what you know as reggae. But you’re going to feel the elements in all of the tracks […] Reggae always feels right to me. It’s in my blood. It doesn’t matter how far or long removed I am from that culture, or my environment that I grew up in; it never leaves. It’s always the same high. Even though I’ve explored other genres of music, it was time to go back to something that I haven’t really homed in on completely for a body of work.”
She’s also been holed up in the studio recently with Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo aka The Neptunes, so the album may also feature their off-kilter, stripped-down electronic funk sound.
Rihanna’s new album tour
In February last year, NME reported that RiRi fans noticed leaked tour dates popping up in Google searches, with the first date appearing to be Portland, Maine on April 12, 2019.
Once again, however, the date came and went without a peep, and with the coronavirus pandemic causing major tour cancellations throughout the music industry, it’s unlikely we’ll hear about tour dates any time soon.
Rihanna’s new album tracklist
No tracklist has been revealed as of yet, but based on Rihanna’s previous albums, it’s probably safe to assume that we can expect between 10 and 14 new tracks.
Rihanna’s new album cover art
Currently, we know nothing about the artwork Rihanna has selected for R9. The ANTI cover, which was designed by Israeli artist Roy Nachum, is her favorite to date, so perhaps we can expect something equally as conceptual on the next album.
Rihanna’s new album guest appearances
Apart from Pharrell and the Neptunes, we could see appearances from Kendrick Lamar, DJ Khaled, Calvin Harris, or Future, if her previous collabs are anything to go by.
In an interview with Vogue in May 2018, Vogue speculated that she could be working with Supa Dups, a producer who has worked with genre icons including Beenie Man, Sean Paul, and Elephant Man. Shaggy, meanwhile, reportedly refused to work on R9 after he was allegedly asked to audition for the job.