Rihanna has reportedly been planning her musical comeback, looking to release new music and go on a world tour next year.
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The ‘Don’t Stop’ singer has been teasing her ninth studio album, dubbed ‘R9’ since 2018, first promising to release it in 2019. That year, she captioned a video of a dog dancing to House Of Pain’s ‘Jump Around’ with the message “Update: me listening to R9 by myself and refusing to release it.”
Now, Entertainment Tonight has reported that the Bajan-born pop star is planning her musical return and has recently signed a deal with Live Nation. The publication also revealed that Rihanna is looking to release new music as well as go on a world tour from 2024-2025.
The Fenty fashion label owner’s original goal was reportedly to go on tour this year, before finding found out she and partner A$AP Rocky were expecting their second child, Riot Rose. Reports emerged that she was set to headline Glastonbury 2023 before being with child forced her to pull out. She is rumoured to be one of the two female headliners booked to top the bill at the festival in 2024.
In February, she told British Vogue that she wanted to drop her album this year.
“Honestly, it’d be ridiculous if it’s not this year,” she said. “But I just want to have fun. I just want to make music and make videos.”
Rihanna also admitted that her 2016 record ‘Anti’ was her “most brilliant album” and that its legacy – along with her perfectionist tendency –has gotten in the way of her releasing her next work.
“I realised 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,” the 35-year-old said of the upcoming album. “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.”
Rihanna’s last release was the 2022 song ‘Lift Me Up’, a sombre ballad that was the lead single to the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever soundtrack. It also was a tribute to the late actor Chadwick Boseman.
In March this year, Rihanna was the headlining act for the Super Bowl LVI Halftime Show, where she revealed her second pregnancy to the world. Ahead of the performance, she told the Associated Press that “Super Bowl is one thing. New music is another thing,” insinuating she wasn’t releasing music around the time of the performance.
She continued: “I knew, the second that I announced this I said, ‘Oh my God, they’re gonna think my album is coming, I need to get to work.’”
At the press conference for the Apple Music Super Bowl LVII Halftime Show, Rihanna revealed that she was “open to exploring, discovering, creating things that are new, things that are different, things that are off, weird, might never make sense to my fans. I just want to play, I want to have fun with music.”
In other news, Rihanna also become the first female to have ten songs reach one billion streams on Spotify.
The post Rihanna reportedly planning to release new music and tour in 2024 appeared first on NME.
