In a new interview with Harper’s Bazaar published over the weekend, former singer turned Avon Lady got candid about her long-awaited ninth studio album. First debunking the years-old rumor that her next album will be a reggae record, Rihanna told the outlet, “Way off! There’s no genre now. That’s why I waited.”
“Every time” she approached her next album, she explained, “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.”
Rih says she feels “really optimistic” about it. “This feels right. It feels like it digs right into where I need to be, and I want this. This body needs to come out, and I’m ready to go there.”
She added that working on the album “is becoming my new freedom, because when I’m in the studio, I know that my time away from my kids is to blossom something that hasn’t been watered in eight years.”
“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!”
Read her full interview here, or not.
