Rihanna is working "backward" on her new album.
The "We Found Love" singer told Interview Magazine that she is taking a different approach to her long-awaited ninth studio album.
As she contemplates her return to the recording studio, the GRAMMY-winner says that she mostly has ideas for visuals for the new album, which has not been her usual method. With "random ideas, quirky ideas" bubbling up in the powerhouse singer's mind, she states that she hopes the visual ideas will lead her to new songs she has not recorded yet.
"I have a lot of visual ideas. It's weird. My brain is working backward right now. I usually have the music first, and the music leads me into all of these visual opportunities, and now I'm having all of these visuals, and I don't have the songs for them yet, but maybe that's the key, this time. Maybe the visual ideas are leading me to the songs that I need to make."
The quote suggests that Rihanna could be starting from scratch on the new album, or the visuals are leading her to songs she has not created yet. Either way, there seems to be forward motion on her much-talked-about comeback LP.
She went on to say that the visual concepts she is thinking of are "things that have nothing to do with me at all," before shutting down in fears of giving too much away because "the opps is watching."
The only audience that Rihanna seems to be singing to these days are her children, as she also opens up about the adorable moment her son, RZA, said his first words after she was singing to him.
"I used to try to get his attention all the time, and I would say, 'Hey, hey, hey.' And one day he said it back to me in the same melody and I kept singing it and he kept following it over and over again."
After giving birth to RZA in May 2022, the star announced that she was pregnant with her second child during her 2023 Super Bowl Halftime performance. They welcomed Riot on Aug. 1, 2023.
Eight years after her most recent album, "Anti," the singer has been hinting at her next studio venture for some time. After she welcomed her first son, her brief moment back in the music industry with the Super Bowl and her Black Panther songs signaled that the album might be close, but never came to fruition.
The most recent update on the record came from A$AP Rocky telling fans in Paris that "[Rihanna]'s working on it." The "Umbrella" songstress opened up about the album to Billboard in 2021, stating that her listeners are "not going to expect what you hear" once she drops the LP.
"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," she said.
