Rihanna cranked out her first seven studio albums in just as many years. In 2026, there\u2019s quantifiable evidence that the Barbadian artist has an unshakeable work ethic \u2014 just spend 30 seconds in a Sephora or scrolling Instagram ads \u2014 but when I think about Rihanna\u2019s discography, I think about the teenage girl who Jay-Z signed to Def Jam on the spot. I think about how she was barely old enough to drive in the United States when she moved here from Barbados, and how she was only 19 when she began recording her aptly-titled \u201cgrown up\u201d album Good Girl Gone Bad. I think about the chaos that ensued among fans when 2013 came and went without a new Rihanna album, marking only the second Rihanna-less calendar year since 2005. I think about how even having to testify in a domestic violence case didn\u2019t derail that streak. I tend to withhold pity for the uber-wealthy, but I do think it was a small miracle that Rihanna didn\u2019t burn out from music sooner.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I think Rihanna needed to make Anti, which turns 10 years old today, although it was a bit of a bumpy ride to get to her eighth studio album. She followed Jay-Z to Roc Nation, and across 2015 she released three vastly different singles: \u201cFourFiveSeconds” with Kanye West and Paul McCartney, “Bitch Better Have My Money,\u201d and “American Oxygen.” She celebrated 4\/20 that same year by releasing \u201cJames Joint,\u201d a funky interlude where she admits that she\u2019d \u201crather be smoking weed whenever we breathe,\u201d on her website before it was removed not long after. That October, she and artist Roy Nachum hosted an event at Los Angeles\u2019 MAMA Gallery to reveal the title and cover art of Anti. Nachum\u2019s painting of a young Rihanna wearing a crown is layered with a poem she co-wrote with Chloe Mitchell, reading in part: \u201cMy voice is my suit and armor, my shield, and all that I am.\u201d No new music was played at the event.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Finally, in the days leading up to Anti\u2019s scheduled release date, Kanye West stepped down as its executive producer for unknown but now-fortunate reasons. In the final preceding hours, instead of just its official lead single \u201cWork<\/a>,\u201d the whole album was leaked on Jay-Z\u2019s then-burgeoning Tidal. It was a chaotic album rollout for a project that also felt a bit incohesive upon release, something Rihanna herself likely sensed: \u201cI went through so many emotions and roller coasters of feeling good, loving it, hating it, doubting myself, hating myself,\u201d she said at the time. \u201c\u2018This is awful.\u2019 \u2018I lost it.\u2019 \u2018Wait, but I do love it still…\u2019 Eventually you just need to know who you are. You know when something is you.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s remarkably appropriate that Anti opens with the SZA duet \u201cConsideration,\u201d the song Rihanna herself has said best encapsulates the album\u2019s essence. Over a pared-down instrumental that feels equal parts indebted to classic dub and the art-pop of \u201dVenus As A Boy,\u201d Rihanna alludes to the growing pains that come with having your star cemented at such a young age: \u201cI got to do things my own way, darling\/ You should just let me\/ Why you ain\u2019t ever let me grow?\u201d Like quite a few moments on Anti \u2014 \u201cJames Joint\u201d included \u2014 it\u2019s a little on-the-nose, but I can\u2019t blame Rihanna for feeling like that might be the most effective way to get her message across. The absence of a shoo-in radio hit like \u201cPon De Replay,\u201d \u201cUmbrella,\u201d or \u201cOnly Girl (In The World)\u201d was deliberate, and made room for Rihanna to act on her creative whims with a laundry list of notable personnel: \u201cI take risks because I get bored,\u201d she said then. \u201cAnd I get bored very easily\u2026 My thoughts never bore me.\u201d<\/p>\n But because the world remains infatuated with Rihanna, Anti did spawn hits, three of which cracked the Hot 100 Top 10: The doo-wop facsimile \u201cLove On The Brain,\u201d the hazy Mustard-produced \u201cNeeded Me,\u201d and the relatively understated, Drake-featuring \u201cWork,\u201d which went to #1 in spite of Rih\u2019s patois embellishments and unabashedly Barbadian delivery. An early Anti review somewhat heedlessly described \u201cWork\u201d\u2019s lyrics as \u201cpost-language,\u201d a sentiment to which Rihanna shrugged: \u201cThat\u2019s how we speak in the Caribbean. It\u2019s very broken and it\u2019s, like, you can understand everything someone means without even finishing the words.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Anti didn\u2019t need to make sense to anyone else; it only needed to make sense to Rihanna. That\u2019s why Extreme guitarist Nuno Bettencourt shreds over the trap percussion of \u201cKiss It Better\u201d; why the \u201cNever Ending\u201d goes full acoustic-folk mode; why the record closes with the balladic one-two punch of the dazzling \u201cHigher\u201d and the piano-backed \u201cClose To You\u201d; why there\u2019s a full-on Tame Impala cover co-signed by the guy himself. Between those moments are songs like \u201cWoo,\u201d a Travis Scott-featuring Weeknd co-write that sounds almost sinister, and \u201cYeah, I Said It,\u201d where Timbaland makes a beat better suited for the bedroom than the club.<\/p>\n If there is one common thread through Anti besides Rihanna\u2019s laissez-faire attitude towards it, it\u2019s the messy stages of post-breakup grief, from the razor-sharp dismissal of “Needed Me” to the cautious optimism of \u201cNever Ending.\u201d That jadedness is perhaps best depicted on the psych-rock influenced \u201cDesperado,\u201d which puts Rihanna at the center of her own fucked up Wild West odyssey: \u201cIf you want, we can be runaways\/ Running from any sight of love,\u201d she sings. \u201cThere ain’t nothin’ here for me anymore.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n A few years after Anti\u2019s release, Rihanna alluded to having gone through a \u201creally hard time\u201d while making it: \u201cI felt like maybe I had disappointed god so much that we weren\u2019t as close,\u201d she said in 2019, a somewhat shocking statement coming from the woman who swore against becoming a role model. \u201c[My faith] wasn\u2019t even lost then. The devil just has a way of making you feel like you\u2019re not good enough.\u201d She didn\u2019t elaborate much further. In the years surrounding Anti, Rihanna kept the majority of her personal life close to her chest: She\u2019d roll her eyes when asked about her off-again, on-again partner Drake, or go conspicuously quiet at the mention of ex Travis Scott. She was single, she claimed when Anti came out, but only because she was too busy to handle a relationship. She juggled a handful of acting projects between tours, and positioned herself as a business mogul by launching Fenty Beauty, her lingerie brand Savage X Fenty, and the now-defunct ready-to-wear line Fenty in 2017, 2018, and 2019 respectively. Then Rihanna\u2019s priorities shifted yet again.<\/p>\n Rihanna began dating ASAP Rocky, the father of her three children, in 2020. Each of their pregnancies was announced with fanfare: First came a stunning photoshoot in the New York snow, then a jaw-dropping Super Bowl Halftime Show performance, then a walk along the Met Gala red carpet. Over time, hope of Anti\u2019s follow-up has diminished to Sky Ferreira levels of improbability, even once donning a possibly-not-ironic \u201cI\u2019m Retired\u201d<\/a> t-shirt in front of paparazzi cameras. She\u2019s hinted at a return to the studio as recently as last year<\/a>, but aside from being a featured artist on a few singles from friends like DJ Khaled, the only new music we\u2019ve heard from Rihanna since Anti has been for presumably lucrative movie soundtracks.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t think it\u2019s a tragedy if Anti ends up being the last album Rihanna ever releases. A decade in hindsight, the album\u2019s inconsistencies feel more like purposeful eclecticism, and its hits function on their own while serving crucial purposes in the context of the record. \u201cLove On The Brain\u201d at the karaoke bar, for one, feels a lot more carefree than \u201cLove On The Brain\u201d following \u201cDesperado\u201d and \u201cNeeded Me.\u201d Anti is daring, multifarious, and sometimes strange, as is the woman behind it. Ahead of the album\u2019s release, she said its title referenced \u201ca person opposed to a particular policy, activity or idea.\u201d Anti doesn\u2019t get quite that philosophical, but it does make clear exactly what Rihanna is standing for: herself. That\u2019s not such a bad way to go out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rihanna cranked out her first seven studio albums in just as many years. 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