Rihanna's New Album 'R9' Release Date Set For 2023: 'I Want It' This Year

Rihanna is coming back with new music soon.

In an interview for British Vogue's latest cover story, the 34-year-old "Umbrella" singer opened up about her plans for her upcoming ninth studio album and explained why it's taking so long to release the follow-up to 2016's "Anti."

Rihanna said that "Anti," which peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and earned her several Grammy nominations, was the "most brilliant" and "most cohesive" album she's ever made. But it led to a lot of pressure to release better music and surpass that album.

"There's this pressure that I put on myself. That if it's not better than that then it is not even worth it," the Grammy winner told the magazine.

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."

Eventually, the legendary singer realized that waiting for the "perfect and better" time might take forever and that she didn't want it to come down to not releasing any new music at all.

"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," she teased of her next album.

Although Rihanna is keeping the details of her upcoming music under wraps, she said she hasn't stopped recording or working on tracks since she last released an album. She admitted to listening back to unreleased songs, which she described as "almost like trying to dress like you used to dress. It's like, 'Ew, no. I would never wear those again.' Your taste changes, your vibe changes."

But the singer promised that the launch of her ninth album, dubbed "R9," is coming soon.

"I want it to be this year," she said. "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."

"And I need the right background music with the visuals. I can't just go shoot a video [of] me talking," she added.

Rihanna has teased details about her next album several times over the past years. In an interview with The New York Times Style magazine in 2019, she told Jeremy Harris that her next album would focus on the reggae genre and would potentially be titled "R9."

A year later, a representative for the singer said that the album was "pretty much completed and they were just working on mixing, mastering and deciding which songs to actually use."

The news came after rapper Shaggy claimed that he was invited to feature on the album but allegedly declined because he "didn't need to audition," according to NME.

However, no further details about the album were released until 2022 when Rihanna spoke to Entertainment Tonight and said, "Yes, you're still going to get music from me." She added a joke about her pregnancy with her then-unborn child with A$AP Rocky, "My fans would kill me if they waited this long for a lullaby."

During a recent Apple Music press conference ahead of her Super Bowl LVII halftime show, Rihanna also subtly teased plans for her new album, saying that she was open to "exploring, discovering and creating things that are new, different, off and weird."

When Rihanna took the stage at State Farm Stadium in Arizona Sunday, nearly seven years after her last live performance at the 2018 Grammy Awards, fans hoped that the singer would surprise them with a new song, according to Insider. Instead, Rihanna made a different bombshell revelation: her second pregnancy with her boyfriend, Rocky.