Why Rihanna Doesn't Release Music Anymore
In case you haven't noticed, there's a gaping hole in the music industry — a Rihanna-shaped hole at that. Despite the constant badgering of her global fanbase, the award-winning artist has yet to release a follow-up to her 2016 album "Anti." She has been teasing her fans with new music in the years since, even joking on Instagram that she was "listening to R9 by myself and refusing to release it."
In fairness to Rihanna, she hasn't turned her back on the music scene despite delaying the release of new material. "I am very aggressively working on music," she told British Vogue in 2020. She's lent her talents to collaborations with the likes of DJ Khaled, Kendrick Lamar, Calvin Harris, and Drake for their respective albums, and in 2023, she surprised everyone by agreeing to perform her greatest hits at the Super Bowl. She also participated in the soundtrack of "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever," and the track, "Lift Me Up," which is also a tribute to the late actor Chadwick Boseman, was nominated for multiple awards, including a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Golden Globe.
It's pretty clear that music still runs in Rihanna's veins, so, what's holding her back from dropping another blockbuster album? Well, the answer is complicated. Since stepping back from music, Rihanna has been anything but idle. She's launched two successful brands and embarked on perhaps her most profound journey yet: motherhood.
Rihanna's already made her mark in the music industry
Throughout Rihanna's decades-long career, she has already released enough material to prove that she's a one-of-a-kind talent. Despite R&B being one of her main genres, the singer has successfully showcased that she can be genre-agnostic, too, having dropped a diverse range of hit tracks, from the reggae-influenced "SOS" to the EDM-heavy "We Found Love" to the doowop-inspired "Love on the Brain." She can do it all and has the achievements and awards to back it up.
Dubbed as the best-selling digital singles artist in history, more than 60 of Rihanna's songs landed a spot in the Billboard Hot 100, and more than a dozen of them shot up to No. 1. Known for her impeccable work ethic, she never failed to release an album nearly every year since she broke into the industry in 2005 until 2012. Her 2016 album, "Anti," never left the Billboard 200 chart for nearly half a decade.
As for awards, Rihanna's collection is brimming with them. She's nabbed 34 Grammy nominations and won nine of them. She also has 12 Billboard Music Awards and 13 American Music Awards, one of which is the Icon Award that she won in 2013, not even a full decade into her career. "I can't believe that at 25 years old I'm holding an Icon award," she said at the time. With a ton of accolades in tow and an impressive discography to show her musical prowess, does she have anything left to prove?
Rihanna is focused on tending to her growing family
Rihanna has embraced a new chapter in her life as a mother, welcoming two children with her partner A$AP Rocky, which is indicative of a shift in priorities towards family and motherhood. According to a source close to the global icon, Rihanna is thoroughly enjoying motherhood, placing it above all her other priorities. "The main focus right now is on her family ... She still feels passionate about creating music, but she doesn't have major plans right now," they told People. "She loves being a mom so this is where her mind is at the moment. She is the happiest she has ever been."
Rihanna's maternal desires were never a secret. In fact, the "Work" singer even expressed interest in having a big family, previously telling British Vogue that she wants three or four children. But she says she remains open to whatever life brings her way. "My wish would be I would like to have more kids but whatever God wants for me, I'm here," she explained. "I'm open [to whatever baby sex next]. Girl, boy. Whatever."
And while Rihanna has achieved many milestones in her career as an artist, her ultimate dream was to become a mother — and she's living that dream right now with her sons RZA and Riot. "You don't have an idea. You just hope, 'I can have kids one day and I hope I can have them in love," she shared with Access Hollywood. "And it's happening, and I can't believe it."
She's busy with her businesses
Rihanna wasn't kidding when she belted out, "Work, work, work, work, work." Since her hiatus, she has really put in the work — not in music but in her retail businesses. In 2017, she launched her Fenty Beauty line in partnership with fashion powerhouse LVMH and clinched a staggering $100 million in sales in its early days. Her initial goal was to create products that looked good on everyone, no matter their skin tone. "I wanted things that I love. Then I also wanted things that girls of all skin tones could fall in love with," she told Refinery29. Fenty Beauty has since evolved into a beauty behemoth, with a reported valuation of $2.8 billion and nearly $600 million in annual sales.
She didn't stop there! In 2018, she debuted her Savage x Fenty lingerie line in an effort to create confidence-boosting intimates for women of all sizes. "My vision for Savage X has always been inclusivity, has always been having women feel confident and expressing themselves through a little lace, a little corsetry, a little T-shirt bra," she said (via CNET). Per a March 2022 Bloomberg report, Rihanna is looking to take the company public, which could raise its value to $3 billion. Even if she decides against it, the brand is still primed to grow to $216.9 million by 2025. NBD!
With a net worth of $1.4 billion, largely fueled by her flourishing business ventures, Rihanna stands as one of the wealthiest musicians in history. Her golden streak with her businesses provides little incentive for her to transition back into music. After all, why would you write bops when you could be making millions?
Rihanna feels pressured to top her 'Anti' album
If Rihanna's fans have a hard time picking favorites from her rich discography, the singer herself is the exact opposite. In an interview with Vogue, the multi-hyphenate admitted that "Anti" is "my best album to this day." It happens to be the last album she released before going on a years-long hiatus, and per Rihanna, it might as well be her magnum opus, a masterpiece that set a high bar for any succeeding records.
"When you come off of an album like 'Anti' ... In hindsight, it really is my most brilliant album," she shared in her British Vogue interview. "But it always felt like the most cohesive album I've ever made." This realization brought a certain pressure and challenged her to try and surpass her own best work. "But there's this pressure that I put on myself. That if it's not better than that then it is not even worth it," she admitted. "It is toxic ... It's not the right way to look at music."
But the artist-turned-entrepreneur is optimistic about her future in music, promising her next record to be a departure from "Anti" and her previous styles. "I'm looking at my next project completely differently from the way I had wanted to put it out before. I think this way suits me better, a lot better," she dished to Vogue. "It's authentic, it'll be fun for me, and it takes a lot of the pressure off."
Don't fret — she's not retiring from music completely
If you're still waiting with bated breath for the so-called "R9" to drop, there's plenty to be excited about. Rihanna stays true to her word and has never given up on music despite having a ton of other responsibilities. It's just that she has a lot to juggle, so producing an album takes longer now than in the past. "I used to be in the studio, only the studio, for three months straight, and an album would come out. Now, it's like a carousel," she told actor Sarah Paulson in an Interview Magazine feature. "I do fashion one day, lingerie the next, beauty the next, then music the next. It's like having a bunch of kids and you need to take care of them all."
In March 2023, she told British Vogue that her goal for that year was to finally put out an album, even suggesting it would be "ridiculous" if it didn't materialize. It hasn't happened yet, but to appease fans, the singer teased months later that not only new music will come in the foreseeable future, but a full-blown tour, too. "We're always gonna go back on tour. I want to do a tour when there's new music," she shared with Entertainment Tonight in December 2023. "I feel like it's only fair that my fans get what they've been waiting on, which is new music, and after that, let's just blow everything up."