It’s official: Rihanna is back in the studio and working on a follow-up to her 2016 album, Anti.A decade after its release, Anti continues to chart and has left a lasting impact on the pop culture landscape. Fans, as such, have been begging Rihanna for years to release more music.Rihanna has heard them—and has been working on her ninth album dubbed R9 by fans. Progress has been slow, but the singer has been busy with other parts of her life, too. Over the past 10 years, Rihanna has welcomed three kids and has launched and sustained two businesses: her lingerie line, Savage X Fenty, and beauty brand, Fenty Beauty.She has also discussed her progress creating her ninth album over the years. Here’s everything we know about the project.Jump to:What will R9 sound like?Why has Rihanna waited so long to release R9?Has Rihanna started recording R9?When is the album coming?What will R9 sound like?Rihanna has been teasing the vibe of her ninth album since the late 2010s. In 2019, she told Vogue that she was looking to the sounds of her home country, Barbados, for inspiration with the album’s genre.Gilbert Carrasquillo//Getty Images“I like to look at it as a reggae-inspired or reggae-infused album. 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 said at the time. “Reggae always feels right to me. It’s in my blood. It doesn’t matter how far or long removed I am from that culture, or my environment that I grew up in; it never leaves. It’s always the same high. Even though I’ve explored other genres of music, it was time to go back to something that I haven’t really homed in on completely for a body of work.”In 2024, Rihanna hinted that she was going back to the drawing board with the album’s theme after a period of “rediscovery.”“I have been working on the [new] album for so long that I kinda put all that stuff aside, and now I’m prepared to go back in the studio,” she told Entertainment Tonight. “I actually want to go back and listen to stuff with new ears—with my new perspective and then see what applies and what I’m still in love with.”By 2025, Rihanna revealed that the reggae plans for her next album were scrapped. “There’s no genre now. That’s why I waited. Every time, 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,’” she told Harper’s Bazaar.Why has Rihanna waited so long to release R9?In 2023, Rihanna explained that she thinks Anti is her best album to date, which makes it difficult to put out a follow-up project because of the pressure from herself.“When you come off of an album like Anti…In hindsight, it really is my most brilliant album. I say that because in the moment, I didn’t realize it. But it always felt like the most cohesive album I’ve ever made,” she told British Vogue. “When you break it down and you realize this album goes from ‘Work’ to ‘Kiss It Better’ to ‘Needed Me’ to ‘Love on the Brain’ to ‘Sex with Me’ ‘Desperado.’ And somehow it all fits and not for a second, did you glitch? Right? It’s like a DJ’s worst nightmare.”Frazer Harrison//Getty Images“But there’s this pressure that I put on myself. That if it’s not better than that then it is not even worth it,” she continued. “It is toxic. It’s not the right way to look at music because music is an outlet and a space to create, and you can create whatever. It doesn’t have to even be on any scale. It just has to be something that feels good. It could just be a song that I like. It literally could be that simple.”The pop star ultimately came to a conclusion: “I realized that if I keep waiting until this feels right and perfect and better, maybe it’s going to keep taking forever and maybe it’ll never come out and no, I’m not down to that. So I want to play. And by play, I mean I have my ideas in my head, but I can’t say them out loud yet.”Matt Winkelmeyer//Getty ImagesIn 2025, she told Harper’s Bazaar that she didn’t want to put so much time into a project for it to fall flat. “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,” Rihanna explained. “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.”The pop star also noted that she never stopped going to the studio to work on the album, but the delay, in part, stemmed from her experiencing ebbs and flows in the creative process. “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,’” she added. “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!”Has Rihanna started recording R9?She has been working on it for years. In January 2026, Rihanna was even spotted entering a recording studio in New York City in photos taken by Backgrid.The Fenty founder later confirmed she has been doing studio sessions in a day-in-the-life video posted on Feb. 26, 2026. During a meeting, Rihanna told those in attendance, “I have to go to the studio after this. And I have to make a Mardi Gras costume for my son after the studio. Longest day ever.”Not long after that, Rihanna shared a brief clip of herself in a recording studio with a team of people. She was there for over two hours.View full post on InstagramWhen is the album coming?No release date has been shared as of March 2026. “I can’t say when I’m going to drop,” Rihanna teased in her 2020 interview with British Vogue. “But I am very aggressively working on music.”This post will be updated.