Rihanna isn't shying away from the cameras anymore, and her comeback is officially in full swing.
Days after her long-awaited Super Bowl Halftime Show – where she announced she is pregnant with her second child with A$AP Rocky – the star is opening up even more about all the questions fans have been asking for the past few years.
For a new cover story with British Vogue, in which her relationship with her rapper boyfriend, plus their son, are front and center, she finally spoke about life as a first-time mom, and of course, when that ninth album is coming.
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"I just couldn't be a sellout," she first said of why she put off doing the Super Bowl Halftime for so many years. "There's things within that organization that I do not agree with at all, and I was not about to go and be of service to them in any way," she explained. She had turned down an offer from the NFL to perform in 2018 in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick, who, costing him his NFL career, had taken a stance against racial injustice and police brutality.
However, she was honored to be a part of two back-to-back Super Bowls where Black artists took center stage, last year's performers being Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige and Kendrick Lamar, plus Eminem.
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At the Super Bowl, she sang some of her greatest hits, and while it was certainly, in fact, a hit, the question of when she would release new music – she hasn't in seven years with the exception of Lift Me Up for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever – still loomed, until now.
The soon to be family of four made a splash with their latest cover
She first explained part of the hesitation was realizing her last album, Anti, felt like her best work ever. "There's this pressure that I put on myself. That if it's not better than that then it is not even worth it."
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Though in typical Rihanna fashion she remained largely mum on the subject, she confessed: "I want it to be this year," she says of her ninth album, adding: "Like, honestly, it'd be ridiculous if it's not this year. But I just want to have fun. I just want to make music and make videos."
The star revealed she didn't know she was pregnant at the time of her photoshoot
The other thing fans want to know about, besides the album? More about her baby son, whose name has yet to be revealed. The cover story's writer, Giles Hattersley, even joked: "Rihanna, Rocky, their families and teams are so consistent in calling him “baby” in my presence I do half wonder if his name might actually be Baby."
However, while she remained even more hush-hush about her first-born's name, her gushing about motherhood was in abundance throughout the profile. At one point she endearingly recalls: "I remember in the beginning I used to roll his bassinet into the bathroom and be showering and like wiping the fog off [the glass] just to peep at him," adding: "Those were always my favorite, his little wake-up face, seeing his face change, seeing his color come in, just all of these changes."
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