The singer hinted at 'weird' new musical directions at her Super Bowl press conference on Thursday.
Rihanna isn't announcing new music just yet, but she's got some ideas!
"Musically, I'm feeling open," the performer announced during her Super Bowl LVII press conference on Thursday. "I'm feeling open to exploring, discovering, creating things that are new, things that are different, things that are off, weird, might never make sense to my fans. I just want to play, I want to have fun with music."
RiRi also joked about her lengthy hiatus while answering fan questions about her favorite album in her catalog. While her early albums were recorded on the road while touring, the singer had to share her affection for the creative energy she was allowed to put into 2016's Anti.
"Anti was the first time that I took my time making an album while not on tour," she recalled. "That frustrated my fans a bit and now, look, I'm doing it to them again!"
Rihanna was running on no sleep, having rehearsed through the night at the Super Bowl venue, State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona.
"I've been so focused on the Super Bowl, I totally forgot my birthday is coming up. I totally forgot about Valentine's Day," she joked. "[There's] a lot of preparation, a lot of moving parts. And this week, this is the week that everyone is being tested. We're just tightening up everything, everybody's dialing in, everybody's tuning up."
During the press conference, Rihanna admitted that while stepping back into the spotlight can feel overwhelming at times, she thinks her opportunity to perform at the Super Bowl "could have only been now."
"When I first got the call to do it again this year, I was like, 'You sure?'" she recalled with a laugh. "Like, I'm three months postpartum, I don't know that I should be making major decisions right now."
However, her new adventures with motherhood made her more sure than ever that she could handle the challenge.
"When you become a mom, there's something that just happens where you feel like you could take on the world, you could do anything," she shared. "The Super Bowl is one of the biggest stages in the world. So, as scary as that was -- because I haven't been onstage in seven years -- there's something exhilarating about the challenge of it all. And it's important for me to do this this year. It's important for representation, it's important for my son to see that."
The hardest part so far, the performer shared, has been figuring out the setlist, or, as RiRi put it, "trying to cram 17 years of music into 13 minutes."
"The setlist was the biggest challenge. That was the hardest, hardest part," she said, adding that it's still a work in progress. "Deciding how to maximize 13 minutes, but also celebrate. That's what this show's going to be. It's going to be a celebration of my catalog."
"We did a pretty good job at narrowing it down," she continued. "There's probably been about 39 versions of the setlist right now. We're on our 39th. Every little change counts."
While she admitted that the physical challenge of getting back onstage for the first time in seven years is "immense, for many reasons," Rihanna also shared that she's excited to bring some important representation to the Super Bowl stage.
"That's a big part of why it's so important for me to do this show,' she noted. "Representation for immigrants, representation for my country, Barbados. Representing for Black women everywhere. I think that's really important, that's key for people to see those possibilities, and I'm honored to be here."
It's a long way from home," she added. "It's a beautiful journey that I'm on, and I could have never guessed that I would have made it here. So it's a celebration of that."
Super Bowl LVII airs Sunday, Feb. 12 on Fox. Stay tuned right here to ETonline.com for more exclusive Super Bowl content. Additionally, CBS Sports has full in-depth Super Bowl coverage.
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