Rihanna Says Long-Awaited 9th Studio Album Will Show Fans ‘the Worth in the Wait’: ‘I Cannot Put Up Anything Mediocre’

As the wait for Rihanna’s next album continues, the star teases that it will be anything but “mediocre.”

In an expansive new interview with Harper’s Bazaar published on Saturday, Feb. 22, the nine-time Grammy winner, 37, got candid about her long-awaited and highly anticipated ninth studio album — which she says will be worth the wait.

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, Rihanna then 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,” she told the magazine. “It has to count. It has to matter. I have to show them the worth in the wait.”

And though the wait isn’t over just yet, Rihanna — whose last studio album was 2016’s Anti, and who recently sent fans into a frenzy after she was spotted hitting the recording studio — assured listeners that her album will be anything but subpar.

“I cannot put up anything mediocre,” she told Harper’s Bazaar. “After waiting eight years, you might as well just wait some more.”

And though she did not share much more about the upcoming project, the “Diamonds” singer did say she feels “really optimistic” about it.

“This feels right,” she told the magazine. “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.”

The musician — who shares two sons, RZA, 2, and Riot, 18 months, with partner A$AP Rocky — also said 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,” she further explained. “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,” Rihanna added. “It’s going to be where my artistry deserves to be right now. I feel like I’ve finally cracked it, girl!”

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Elsewhere in her new interview with Harper’s Bazaar, Rihanna reflected on her past music — and revealed that her last album is the only one she can listen to “top to bottom with no shame.”

“I used to always have shame. I actually don’t like listening to my music, but Anti — I can listen to the album,” she told the magazine. “It’s like it’s not me singing it, if I’m just listening to it.”

“That’s the one album,” she added, “that I can have an out-of-body experience where it’s not like … You know when you hear your voice in a voicemail, and it’s like, ‘Ugh.’ ”

And while the beauty and fashion mogul hasn’t released a new album in almost nine years, she did not leave the music world altogether.

Rihanna put out two songs, “Lift Me Up” and “Born Again,” for the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever soundtrack in 2022, and she headlined the Super Bowl halftime show with a career-spanning set the following year.