Rihanna Covers ‘Harper’s Bazaar,’ Gives ‘R9’ Album Update & Talks Parenting With A$AP Rocky
Rihanna is opening up about her family life and the next chapter of her music career.
In the cover story for Harper’s BAZAAR‘s March 2025 issue, published on Saturday (Feb. 22), the 37-year-old singer and entrepreneur shared her thoughts on a variety of personal topics, including the highly anticipated R9 album, raising her children with partner A$AP Rocky, her growing business empire, and more.
More from Billboard
During the in-depth conversation, the Fenty mogul discussed the creative direction of her long-awaited new music and debunked rumors that it would be a reggae album.
“Way off! There’s no genre now. That’s why I waited,” Rihanna explains. “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.’ 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. 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.”
She added, “When I’m in the studio, I know that my time away from my kids is to blossom something that hasn’t been watered in eight years. 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.’ 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!’”
Rihanna has not released an album since 2016’s Anti, which spent two weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. Since then, she’s released a handful of remixes and contributed to the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever soundtrack with “Born Again” and “Lift Me Up.” The latter earned her a Grammy nomination for best song written for visual media, as well as an Oscar nomination for best original song.
“I listen to Anti from top to bottom with no shame,” Rihanna told the publication. “I used to always have shame. I actually don’t like listening to my music, but Anti — I can listen to the album. It’s not me singing it, if I’m just listening to it. That’s the one album that I can have an out-of-body experience where it’s not like … You know when you hear your voice in a voicemail, and it’s like, ‘Ugh.’”
The “Work” hitmaker also reflected on her role as a mother, raising her two young sons — RZA and Riot — with A$AP Rocky. The Harlem rapper, 36, was recently found not guilty on two felony counts of assault with a semiautomatic firearm in Los Angeles.
“Every decision I make revolves around them, but everything that I do that I love robs me from them,” Ri says. “So I have a weird resentment with the things that I love. You almost feel like something is always suffering for you to show up somewhere. And even when you show up there, it’s not 100% because there’s something else on the wheel. It’s actually given me a lot more self-guilt.”
She also spoke lovingly about A$AP’s role as a father. “His pureness. His charm. I’m annoyed because my sons sometimes just live for him more than they live for me,” RiRi said. “And I’m like, ‘Did you know who cooked you? Do you know who pushed you out?’ And they love him, but when I see it, oh, it’s the best.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Rihanna emphasized the significance of her business empire, which includes Fenty Beauty and Savage X Fenty. “I care because my name is on it,” she said. “I don’t want my name to represent anything I don’t fully stand behind.”
Best of Billboard
Sign up for Billboard's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Solve the daily Crossword
