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The news we’ve all been waiting for has finally arrived: Rihanna is working on new music.
The long-awaited update came nearly straight from the source, as Rihanna’s partner, A$AP Rocky, let slip that she has been back “in the studio.” He shared the tidbit while being interviewed on BET’s The Jason Lee Show.
It all started when host Lee asked the rapper if he’s the reason that Rihanna hasn’t released any new music (her last studio album, Anti, came out in 2016). “Yo, she in the studio right now,” Rocky confessed about an hour and a half into the interview.
The “Helicopter” singer then went on to say: “Yeah, I said it. Sorry, babe. Bro, she working. She cooking, bro. No funny shit.” He then jokingly added: “Damn, I’mma get in trouble for this.”
When Lee suggested that the pair should release a double album together, Rocky quickly shot the idea down. “That’s trash. Nobody wants to hear us together, bro,” he said. “I make subversive weird-ass indie rap.”
Rihanna has been on a hiatus from music for about a decade, focusing instead on her businesses, like Fenty Beauty and Savage X Fenty. She’s also welcomed three kids with Rocky, including RZA, 4, Riot, 3, and Rocki, 10 months.
In the last few years, the Barbados native has only recorded a couple of soundtrack cuts, like the Oscar-nominated “Lift Me Up” for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022) and “Friend of Mine” for The Smurfs (2025).
For her March 2025 Harper’s Bazaar cover story, Rihanna declared that she’d finally found the sound for her next album. “I think music is my freedom. I just came to that realization. I just cracked the code on what I really want to do for my next body of work,” she said. “I am actually feeling really good about this. I know I kept saying this over the years.”
Although rumors swirled that the record would be reggae-inspired, Rihanna quickly debunked this theory. “There’s no genre now,” she noted. “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.’ 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. 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.”
She added: “I’ve been in the studio the whole eight years. But 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. 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!”