Even Drake can’t wait to hear Rihanna’s new music!
Fans have been waiting for RiRi’s ninth studio album for the longest time – at this point, it’s beginning to feel like forever. Her last album, Anti, dropped waaaay back in 2016.
She’s made cameos on a few tracks since, but when it comes to her highly-anticipated upcoming album, aside from some vague updates, sorry, no dice.
So, when Rihanna and Drake met up in the digital world – read: they both tuned in to DJ Spade’s livestream on Instagram – he took the chance to urge her to release her new album.
“Rihanna drop R12 right now,” he commented.
He also managed to plug her beauty brand in the convo, writing, “DUB PLATE COME PRETTY LIKE A FENTY FOUNDATION.”
To which RiRi responded, “Give Drake some water.”
“Hahahahhahahaha you have a bad attitude,” Drake bantered back.
Well, her Instagram handle IS @badgalriri…
Her last update on R9 was in an Instagram story back in February, when she shared a snapshot of a soundboard that looks like it was taken inside a recording studio.
“Gang. back in the STU,” she captioned the photo.
The Insta Story also appears to give clues on who she’s working with – The Neptunes, a.k.a. Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo’s production team.
Rhi recently revealed that she’s working with Pharell on new music.
“I’m going to be in the studio. I’m so excited actually. I can’t say who I’m working with, but it’s somebody I’ve been wanting to work with for a long time,” she told The Cut, before adding, “Okay, I’ll tell you. [It’s] Pharrell.”
But as for the release date of R9, she only teased, “To be continued,” miming three dots with her fingers during her interview with Entertainment Tonight.
“I like to antagonize my fans a little bit,” she added. “Well, they antagonize me, too! So, they get it right back.”
Before that, RiRi has been trolling fans about her new tunes. Back in December, she shared a short clip of an adorbs puppy headbanging to the tune of the iconic House of Pain jam “Jump Around.”
“Update: me listening to R9 by myself and refusing to release it,” she captioned the hilarious video.
She did spill some juicy deets about her album to Vogue last November.
“I like to look at it as a reggae-inspired or reggae-infused album,” Rihanna says. “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.”
“Reggae always feels right to me,” she continues. “It’s in my blood. It doesn’t matter how far or long removed I am from that culture, or my environment that I grew up in; it never leaves. It’s always the same high. Even though I’ve explored other genres of music, it was time to go back to something that I haven’t really homed in on completely for a body of work.”
Plus, she also teased that she’s already in the “discovery stage” of her 10th album!
“We always went into the music this time around saying that we were going to do two different pieces of art,” said Rihanna. “One was gonna be inspired by the music that I grew up listening to. And one was gonna be the evolution of where I’m going next with music.”
