Rihanna just gave fans the biggest tease of the decade without releasing a single note. During a Fenty Beauty TikTok Shop livestream, she told her longtime business partner Jennifer Rosales that she has“at least 17 vaults”of unreleased music, comparing her stash to the brand’s 10-product Gloss Bomb Vault. If you do the math, that’s 170 or more tracks just sitting there while fans have been waiting for a new album since ANTI dropped in January 2016.
She didn’t confirm an exact number, didn’t say if the songs are finished, and definitely didn’t announce a release date for the fan-named R9. What she did say is that she holds herself to a high standard:“I cannot put up anything mediocre.”It’s the kind of quote that explains the decade-long wait and frustrates fans at the same time. Since ANTI, she’s released isolated singles like 2022’s“Lift Me Up”and 2025’s“Friend of Mine,”plus plenty of studio teases with no follow-through.
The internet reacted the way you’d expect, with the Navy spiraling over the possibility that a massive Rihanna catalog exists somewhere and none of it is on streaming. Whether any of those 170 songs ever see daylight is still a mystery. But for now, fans finally have a number to obsess over.
What would you do if you found out your favorite artist had 170 unreleased songs locked away?
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Local Lawton
Local Lawton is a contributor to LocalBeat, covering local news and community stories.
