Rihanna Confirms That She’ll Be Releasing New Music Next Year After Fans Kept Hounding Her About It

Rihanna has finally given her fans what they’ve been asking for: a confirmation that she’ll be releasing new music in 2019. Us Weekly reports the pop superstar broke the news in the comments section of an Instagram post. The photo was meant to promote a new lipstick she’ll be releasing via her Fenty Beauty brand. But, as often happens with these posts on her page, one of her fans asked when they’d be getting new music from her. Rihanna simply wrote “2019” in response to one of the comments.

Rihanna released her last album, Anti, in 2016. The project was hailed as a career-defining body of work which yielded a No. 1 hit in “Work,” which featured Drake. But recently, the singer has been focused on expanding her beauty and fashion empire. She launched Fenty Beauty in September, 2017, and received lots of acclaim for including a wide range of skin tones in her foundation collection. Rihanna also launched her own lingerie line in May of this year, Savage x Fenty, and she’s been praised for including models of all shapes, sizes, and colors in their ads and fashion shows.

During all of that, she also managed to fit in an appearance in the movie, Ocean’s 8.

But all of these accomplishments in areas other than music seem to have led some fans to think that Rihanna might be abandoning her pop career. As Us Weekly reports, she addressed those concerns in a previous Instagram comment in September.

“I’m doing music,” she wrote in response to a comment from a fan. “Simultaneously doing lingerie, makeup, film, amongst a couple other things that I enjoy. When music is ready, you won’t have to ask for it. But it’s coming. Just not today sis. I’m hype too tho, it can’t come soon enough for me.”

There have already been clues that Rihanna would be releasing new music in the new year.

As NME reports, in October, Rihanna posted photos and videos of her in the studio working on her new album. According to NME, the project does not have an official name as of yet, but many of Rihanna’s followers have been calling it “R9,” just like they called Anti R8 before its official name was revealed.

Fans who hounded Rihanna for new music may find that they got more than what they asked for when her new songs finally drop.

There has been speculation that she plans to release two albums, one with reggae/dancehall songs and another one that’s more pop oriented. Whether she drops one album or two, it’s likely she’ll be breathing a sigh of relief when she does so, glad that she’ll no longer have to answer questions about it.