Rihanna has given fans new reason to wonder about her return to music after suggesting she has a large number of unreleased songs. The singer shared this information during a TikTok livestream for her beauty brand, Fenty Beauty, providing a rare update on the music she has gathered during her long break from releasing studio albums.
In her October 7th livestream, when asked how many songs she has unshared, she didn’t give an exact number. Instead, she asked her followers to refer to the Fenty Beauty Gloss Bomb Vault, which holds 10 products. “If you got a vault of 10, then I got 17 vaults, ” she said. (Fans have fixated on this line, which could mean she has around 170 songs or more ready to go, but she hasn’t made clear whether she has 170 finished songs.)
Its announcement has also sparked fans’ excitement for R9, the nickname for the singer’s ninth studio effort. R9 was the anticipated title of her next album, following 2016’s ANTI, which featured hit singles like “Work, ” “Needed Me” and “Love on the Brain.” That record marked a critically acclaimed step in a more experimental phase of her career.
Still, music has remained a presence in Rihanna’s life. She featured “Lift Me Up” on the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever soundtrack in 2022, followed by “Friend of Mine” for the Smurfs soundtrack in 2025. The 2023 Super Bowl halftime show put the spotlight back on her catalog of hits, but there was no album announcement.
This amount of work leaves a natural question as to what she will do with the unfinished collection. A substantial backlog could include completed songs, little-known first takes, different cuts, alternate collaborations and rejected tunes. Rihanna has not revealed how much of the collection is, or will be, completed, or if any of those songs will be included on her upcoming album.
Rihanna has previously discussed the pressure linked to her return to music. In earlier interviews, she expressed a desire for her next project to represent her current artistic self, rather than simply repeating the commercial style of her earlier successes. This perspective may help clarify why the album’s release has been delayed, though she has not publicly linked the amount of unreleased material directly to the postponement.
Her work has grown far beyond the studio as well. Fenty Beauty has become a major player in the beauty world, and Savage X Fenty is making a splash in the world of lingerie. And her projects and her family with rapper A$AP Rocky, Rihanna has managed to juggle both her professional and personal life. Her Twitter remarks about her unreleased music show it is still a part of her legacy even if other issues command more of our attention.
