There was a time–a better, simpler time–when a Rihanna album came every year like clockwork. Between 2005 and 2012 she released seven studio albums, two remix LPs, and never left the airwaves for long. The three-plus years it took for her to put out ANTI paid off with one of the great pop records of the last decade, but since then the well has run dry as she’s turned her focus to dominating other business ventures the way she once did the Billboard charts.
So Rihanna’s ninth studio album, referred to usually as R9, is reaching a rarified status as one of the most anticipated projects in recent memory. Detox what? Chinese Democracy who? And even though she’s busy creating an (inclusive) empire in makeup and fashion to the tune of an alleged billion dollar net worth, she’s also been sure to drop a breadcrumb or two about what the next album will sound like.
The latest appeared in an interview this week during her Savage X Fenty Show: “You’re not gonna expect what you hear. Just put that in your mind. Whatever you know of Rihanna is not gonna be what you hear,” she said. “I’m really experimenting and music is like fashion, you should be able to play. I should be able to wear whatever I want and I treat music the same way.”
Well, that quote is a departure from the little we’ve heard about the album so far. The promise of “experimenting” even sounds a little bit like her boyfriend A$AP Rocky’s divisive third album Testing, which saw the New York rapper make bold inroads into unexpected sounds that didn’t always pay off.
Contrast that to one of the earliest and most tantalizing R9 tidbits from May 2018, when Rihanna told Vogue she wanted to make a reggae album, and the interviewer alluded to the possible influence of Supa Dups, a legendary Jamaican producer who worked on early Rihanna songs like Music of the Sun’s “You Don’t Love Me (No, No, No),” as well as tracks by Kardinal Offishall and Drake on which she was featured. This was corroborated by Rolling Stone reporting from July that year, which claimed that in addition to Supa Dups, musicians like Kranium, R. City, and Ricky Blaze all contributed to R9.
“Every artist, every producer, every songwriter in Jamaica or of Jamaican descent has been working on [Rihanna’s album] and has little snippets of publishing or production credits on it,” a source told the magazine.
Rihanna seemingly confirmed the reggae vibe in another Vogue conversation a year later. “I like to look at it as a reggae-inspired or reggae-infused album,” Rihanna 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.” When the reporter asked about a release date, Rihanna responded that her “Navy–my scary fans,” were not going to be happy that the question was posed at all, though she was willing to razz them a bit.
Back in December 2019, Rihanna posted a video of a scruffy white dog going absolutely buckwild to House of Pain’s “Jump Around,” captioning it: “Update: me listening to R9 by myself and refusing to release it.” She isn’t being coy about how much fun she’s having twisting the knife, either.
In a February 2020 interview with Entertainment Tonight, she spoke about the perverse satisfaction she gets from teasing folks about the upcoming record. “I like to antagonize my fans a little bit. Well, they antagonize me, too! So, they get it right back,” she said. She was cryptic once more in a March 2020 British Vogue cover story, claiming that she was “very aggressively working on new music,” but declining to share much detail.
Singer-songwriter Skylar Grey poured some more fuel on the reggae fire in September 2020 by sharing a since-deleted snippet of a song she worked on with Diplo for Rihanna. The track definitely has a reggae bounce to it, although it’s funny to hear Grey, more known for hooks on maudlin stadium rap songs like Dr. Dre’s “I Need a Doctor,” doing the reference vocals. (This would be a reversal for Rihanna, who has never worked with Diplo and seems to disdain him. In a 2017 GQ Style interview, the producer recalled that he played her a song once and she said, “This sounds like a reggae song at an airport.” Rihanna laughed about it on Instagram, but didn’t exactly deny the burn.)
Rihanna first hinted at a move away from the reggae idea during an October 2020 Associated Press interview, when she revealed she was holding writing camps, and trying to find ways to subvert the more defined structure of her earlier music. “You do pop, you did this genre, you do that, you do radio, but now it’s just like, what makes me happy? I just want to have fun with music,” she said. “Everything is so heavy. The world that we live in is a lot. It’s overwhelming every single day. And with the music, I’m using that as my outlet.”
It’s crucial to note just how little music Rihanna has actually released since ANTI. When she appeared on PartyNextDoor’s “Believe It” last March, it was her first new vocal performance since 2017. She arguably keeps her work even closer to the chest than peers like Beyoncé or Lady Gaga.
Not much is known about potential collaborators, though it’s possible a Rihanna-A$AP Rocky video shoot from July could be for her upcoming album (or his, titled All Smiles). She was working with The Neptunes on Valentine’s Day 2020, which makes sense given that one of her few post-ANTI appearances came on the 2017 N.E.R.D. track “Lemon.” Back in October 2019, eagle-eyed Rihanna fans noted that she had registered a song called “Love Looks Like Us” with BMI. Co-writers included Derrus Rachel, who worked on tracks like “Desperado,” “Woo,” and “Needed Me,” as well as producer Jeff Shum (Vic Mensa, Ella Mai). Another registered song saw Rihanna potentially working with Stockton, California rapper Haiti Babii. The MC also claimed that reggae wunderkind Koffee was working with Rihanna in 2019, too.
It’s hard to figure out exactly what information is worth paying attention to. It’s unlikely R9 is still the same album Rihanna conceived of back in 2018, and she may even decide to save the reggae project for something farther down the line. But Rihanna is one of the few remaining megastars, and whether R9 comes out next week or in 2040, it will be impossible to miss.