At some point we might need a map to chart all the twists and turns of R9. While journalists, fans and pretty much everyone else has been asking Rihanna when we can expect the long-awaited follow-up to her smash 2016 album Anti, the singer continues to give vague, sometimes contradictory answers about the in-progress project.
Speaking to ET on the red carpet at Wednesday’s (April 17) London launch event for the Fenty x Puma Creeper Phatty Earth Tone sneaker, Rih was asked if she and partner A$AP Rocky might pull a Beyoncé and include their sons RZA and Riot on her untitled next album.
“It’s up to them,” Rihanna said of her two-year-old first-born with Rocky and their second son, who was born in August. She was, once again, also a bit vague about when we can expect a firm release date for the collection, saying “I wanna know too!” Then, however, after recently suggesting that she hasn’t really started work on recording songs for the album, RihRih made it sound like she’s actually got quite a few tracks to choose from.
“I already got stuff that I feel like I could make hits out of,” she said. “Me and Rocky are really trying to figure out who’s gonna use what because it’s so good.”
In a recent chat with Interview magazine, however, the singer said she has “a lot of visual ideas” so far, which isn’t typically how she starts her creative process. “It’s weird. My brain is working backward right now. I usually have the music first, and the music leads me into all of these visual opportunities, and now I’m having all of these visuals.”
The bad news, though, was that Rihanna told the mag that she doesn’t yet have the songs to accompany those visuals, but hopefully they’ll come soon. “Maybe the visual ideas are leading me to the songs that I need to make,” she said. In February, Rocky further muddied the waters, teasing at the time that his partner was “working” on the album. In March, Rihanna performed live for the first time in eight years when she took the stage for a pre-wedding celebration for the son of the richest man in Asia.
