The Rihanna documentary is ready to watch

Rihanna’s return to music is finally under way, but despite us getting two whole new tracks from the Black Panther score, it may not play out as you might expect. In a recent interview with the Associated Press, Rihanna set the record straight about her forthcoming Super Bowl performance: that fans should see the performance as an unconnected, entirely separate event to the arrival of a new album.

“Super Bowl is one thing. New music is another thing. Do you hear that, fans?” she said. “The second that I announced this, I said, ‘Oh, my God, they’re going to think my album is coming. I need to get to work.’” Luckily for us, even if new music isn’t right around the corner, we could have a Rihanna documentary to indulge in soon too.

Directed by Friday Night Lights executive producer Peter Berg, the project has been sold to Amazon Studios, and will be released pending approval from the megastar herself. “She’s a perfectionist, so we keep adding,” Peter told The Hollywood Reporter in a recent interview. “It’s been six and a half years of filming, so, yeah, it’s ready to come out. We’re just waiting on her to say, ‘Yeah, let’s do it.’ I don’t know. Maybe it’ll be a 10-year project.” No Peter, don’t say that!

Of course, the Navy have been subject to a number of false starts in the past few years, so don’t be too surprised if we end up waiting for the movie well into the next decade. When what seems to be a new single winds up being… a new highlighter stick instead, it’s understandable that many believed her announcement on Instagram for the Super Bowl might be another decoy. Fans are gearing up for the event to look something like this: 

We jest! So what are the cold hard facts about R9, Rihanna’s forthcoming album, her Super Bowl performance, and the new documentary? Come on gays, let’s break it down.

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What’s the next Rihanna album called?

While elusive artists like Frank Ocean and Lorde have peppered teasers on social media, enough for fans to start at least making wild guesses at what’s coming next, Rihanna fans have nothing for Rihanna’s next standalone record. It’s unlikely her music will bear any of the same titles of her fashion or beauty ranges.

What will Rihanna’s next album sound like?

Now this we have heard hints about. Speaking at a Savage x Fenty show this time last year, RiRi told journalists: “You’re not going to expect what you hear.” Genre-wise she’s done it all, from EDM to rock-pop to R&B. She told Vogue, back in October 2019, that the record would be reggae inspired, which would align with her more recent statements.

In terms of collaborators, well, Rocky is with her in the studio, so a feature wouldn’t be a huge surprise. In pre-COVID times, she also posted on Instagram Stories alluding to being in the studio with The Neptunes, the production duo of Pharrell and Chad Hugo. One of Rihanna’s most recent vocal features was, of course, with N.E.R.D. on “Lemon”. That was so long ago that that music might have been scrapped, but knowing they’ve worked well together before, it’s likely Pharrell will be involved somehow. 

How do I get tickets to see Rihanna at the Super Bowl?

Tickets for the following year’s Super Bowl go on sale shortly after the event happens in February, so die-hard football fans have had the chance to snag tickets to the event for seven months now. But following Rihanna’s announcement as the half-time performer, there was an unprecedented surge in ticket interest. According to AceOdds.com, who picked through Google Trends data, there was a search increase of 9900% for Super Bowl tickets in the 24 hours after she posted that cryptic football pic.

If you’re looking to head down IRL, instead of watching it on TV like the rest of us, you better be prepared to fork out serious cash! Ticketmaster have a series of VIP packages that currently lead to dead links, which makes us think they’ve sold out completely.

There are, as always, resale tickets via VividSeats — but they’re not cheap. Nosebleed stadium seats are currently going for around $4800, if you fancy seeing Rih-ANT-a. Tickets for the lower pitch levels are priced between $15,000 and $40,000.

When can I watch the Rihanna documentary?

This is a tricky one – the film is finished, but according to director Peter Berg, Rihanna still needs to approve the final cut. “It’s done and sold, and Amazon’s ready,” he said in a recent interview. But the filmmaker isn’t all that worried about getting RiRi’s blessing: “When Rihanna asked me to make a doc, I thought she was joking. My work tends to be a bit more masculine, at least on the surface. But this has allowed me to dip in and out of her life while I’m doing other things.”

He continues, “I’ve loved it — watching her in the studio, seeing her turn Fenty into this billion-dollar entity and, now, being a mom. It’s such an enriching experience, I don’t really care how long it takes.” So when can you watch the Rihanna doc? The TL;DR version is: whenever mother says.

What is the next Rihanna album’s release date?

Every time Rihanna has loosely dated new music, saying it’s coming “soon” or, as she said in 2018, “next year”, it’s never materialised. So it’s best to stop hoping quite so hard for a solid timeline. Speaking around a Savage x Fenty launch, Rihanna told Access Hollywood that “In the past, I’d shoot out an album in three months, but now, I don’t have the luxury of doing that because I have this other baby.” The baby she was referring to was Savage x Fenty; now she has an actual baby. But with her first live performance in nearly half a decade lined up, it’s not unlikely that a Rihanna single, at the very least — could be with us within the coming year. No promises though.