Is Rihanna finally ready to release her new album?

After Rih’s new album didn’t drop on its anticipated release date the day after Christmas 2019, fans went into a feeding frenzy on social media to wonder why. In typical Rihanna fashion, she let fans know that she’d release the album when she was ready to do so. And she further teased them with an IG post that said, “Update: Me listening to R9 by myself an refusing to release it.”

January 2020 came and went; still no album. But in mid-February, Rihanna addressed her Gang with another IG post that simply said, “Back in da STU,” underneath a soundboard control panel. She also revealed that she’s collaborating with Neptunes, a production team with Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo at its helm.

It’s been hinted that Rih is also working with A$AP Ferg as a features artist on the album, when A$AP also uploaded the photo of the same soundboard to his IG. The Harlem songwriter and rapper, aka known as Darold Durard Brown Ferguson Jr., hails from Harlem. As a solo performer as well as an ensemble musician in the hip-hop group A$AP Mob, Ferg’s parents are from Trinidad, which is just an hour’s plane trip from Barbados, Rih’s place of birth. Fans anxiously await the melding of the cultures and music from these two artists.