Rihanna knows we’re all waiting for her new music to drop—we’ve actually been waiting nearly nine years, since 2016’s Anti. But in her March 2025 cover story for Harper’s Bazaar, the superstar reveals she was waiting, too, for a sound that aligned to her new self and mirrored her growth. Now, she’s found it.

Singer Rihanna has said her new album will be unexpected and she feels "really optimistic" about it in a rare interview. "I know it's not going to be anything that anybody expects," she told Harper's Bazaar. "And it's not going to be commercial or radio digestible. It's going to be where my artistry deserves to be right now."

After eight years in the studio, Rihanna has finally found a new sense of artistic freedom and the space to craft her long anticipated ninth studio album, commonly referred to as R9 by her devotees, the Navy.