Rihanna has made it clear that new music is not on her agenda for 2024 and beyond — a bit of news which is sure to displease her devoted fans.
In an Instagram Live released shortly after her performance at an Indian wedding on Saturday (March 2), the “Umbrella” singer dismissed the notion of releasing any new music in the foreseeable future.
“Who said album?” she replied when told fans were begging for it in the comments section. “Lord Jesus.”
Check it out below.
Rihanna dashes fans hopes for new music once again as she breaks another record pic.twitter.com/fDdfcT8Xd8
— HipHopDX (@HipHopDX) March 3, 2024
News of Rihanna’s refusal to release a new album comes hot on the heels of the revelation by ChartData that she is the first female artist in history to have 10 videos with 1 billion views each on YouTube.
It also contradicts her longtime partner, A$AP Rocky’s, recent assertion that her musical hiatus is soon coming to an end.
Last month, a Rihanna fan page on X (formerly Twitter) shared a video that sees Rocky posing for a selfie with a fan in Paris. Towards the end, someone is heard asking him to tell his longtime partner that fans are ready for a new album, to which he replies, “She’s working on it.”
If she did have a new album on the way, it would be the singer’s first full length release since her record-breaking, critically lauded 2016 project Anti, which was certified six-times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) last June.
As of January, Anti now holds the distinction of being the first album by a Black female artist to spend 400 weeks (over seven years) on the Billboard 200 albums chart and the fourth longest charting album by a woman in the chart’s history.
In October, The Daily Mirror reported that the Fenty Beauty mogul was planning to return to music with the release of two new albums and a sprawling world tour slated to take place in 2024 and 2025.
The British tabloid reported that the mother of two recently signed a deal with Live Nation worth a reported £32M [almost $38.9M].
However, just two days after the report surfaced, a “high-level source” debunked the rumors, telling Billboard the claims were “bogus,” and that “no tour has been confirmed for Rihanna.”
Ahead of her Apple Music Halftime Show performance at Super Bowl LVII last year, Rihanna did, however, reveal that she had been working on new music that will be unlike anything her fans are used to.