It has been almost ten years since Rihanna released her last album. It’s gotten to the point where people have suspected she’s left music entirely to run her Fenty brand full-time. She doesn’t really have to make music if she doesn’t want to. It’s a staggering contrast to her borderline omnipresence from the mid 2000s into the mid 2010s. After a hefty hiatus, what would a new Rihanna album even sound like? Does she go back to pop and R&B? Or does she veer off into dancehall? Maybe she does something completely left-field and surprises us all.
Thankfully, her man A$AP Rocky clues us in on what a new RiRi album might become. During a January 2026 episode of the Joe Budden Podcast, Rocky revealed just how tapped in his ol’ lady is into hip-hop. Moreover, there are two absolute legends behind the boards that she wants to make music with next.
“Yo, she be encouraging me,” Rocky told Joe Budden and co. “Her style is so crazy, ’cause you wouldn’t expect her to like the people she fuck with. She fuck with Alchemist. That’s who she wanna work with.” Additionally, the “Umbrella” icon is a huge fan of Knxwledge, too, best known for his work with Anderson Paak as NxWorries.
Rihanna Allegedly Wants To Link Up With Two of Hip-Hop’s Greatest Producers for Next Album
Naturally, the Joe Budden podcast hosts got extremely excited when they heard Alchemist and Knxwledge were on the wishlist. With all the excitement in the air, Rocky almost spilled what was next for RiRi after that. Instead, he smirked and bit his tongue, knowing he shouldn’t tell all of her business like that.
Rihanna has played extremely coy about new music over the years. However, thankfully, she hasn’t been too dismissive about creating anything new either. In a conversation with Harpers Bazaar, she still found music to be a cathartic experience for her. So whatever comes next, the “Kiss It Better” crooner teased that she felt great about it. Moreover, she clarified that there’s no concrete genre behind her heavily anticipated record.
“There’s no genre now. That’s why I waited. 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,’” Rihanna said. “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.”
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