Super Bowl Halftime Show: Could Rihanna Finally Debut New Music?

With Rihanna returning to the stage for the first time in five years for Super Bowl LVII, questions have emerged concerning the singer’s long-awaited ninth album. After releasing Anti in January 2016, the Grammy winner has been building anticipation for her next album for quite some time. Still, other endeavors, such as her multi-million dollar Fenty Beauty and Fenty Skin brands and the birth of her first child with A$AP Rocky, have further delayed the album’s release.

#R9, as fans have temporarily referred to the album, has been in development for some time. While appearing on The Graham Norton Show in June 2018, Rihanna confirmed that she was “in the studio and working on new music.” At the time, she teased, “You’ll just have to wait and see.” In her May cover story for Vogue, the pop star talked about letting go of the pressure to outdo Anti creatively. “I’m looking at my next project completely differently from the way I had wanted to put it out before. I think this way suits me better, a lot better. It’s authentic,” she said of her new music. “It’ll be fun for me, and it takes a lot of the pressure off.”

Rihanna is playing the Superbowl 2023 half-time show – it's really happening!https://t.co/EogSgDMIeI#Rihanna #R9 #RiRi pic.twitter.com/Qvi5LZtfr8

— CLASH (@ClashMagazine) September 25, 2022

In 2019, Rihanna also discussed #R9’s reggae-influenced sound with Vogue. “I like to look at it as a reggae-inspired or reggae-infused album,” she said. “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.” She shared with her Ocean’s 8 costar Sarah Paulson in Interview magazine’s Summer 2019 issue that while she used to stay in the studio for three months straight, now she balances “fashion one day, lingerie the next, beauty the next, then music the next.”

She added, “It really does suck that it can’t just come out, because I’m working on a really fun one right now. I’m really happy with a lot of the material we have so far, but I am not going to put it out until it’s complete. It makes no sense to rush it, but I want it out. I’ve gotten to the point where I’m like, ‘Even if I don’t have the time to shoot videos, I’m going to put an album out.’”

Rihanna told Entertainment Tonight in October 2020 that “everything” from the “timing” of the album release to “touring” had been delayed by the coronavirus pandemic. Despite quarantine, she made the most of it, noting, “It’s helped a lot, and it’s forced me to figure things out and get creative and clever about it.” Fans are “not going to expect” what they hear when they listen to Rihanna’s new music, she told the Associated Press in September 2021. “Whatever you know of Rihanna is not going to be what you hear,” she said. “I’m really experimenting. Music is like fashion. You should be able to play. I should be able to wear whatever I want. I treat music the same way. So I’m having fun and it’s going to be completely different.”

As she announced her pregnancy with A$AP Rocky, Rihanna said fans would still be able to hear future music from her. “My fans would kill me if they waited this long for a lullaby,” she joked in an interview with Entertainment Tonight at New York Fashion Week in February 2022. Upon confirmation in September 2022 that Rihanna would perform at the Super Bowl LVII halftime show, fans speculated that her long-awaited album could drop soon or at the event itself. Regardless, Rihanna plans to make her first significant comeback since giving birth in May 2022, and her supporters are hoping that #R9 will follow.