Rihanna, R9, and What Artists “Owe” Us
Artwork by Ellie Bonifant
by Lily Hartenstein
It’s a new decade and among the growing panic over the upcoming election, the death of a beloved sports icon, and the spread of coronavirus, Twitter keeps bringing up one of the foremost issues of our time: the fact that we have yet to receive a new Rihanna album.
Rihanna “promised” an album release in 2019 as a response to an Instagram comment in December 2018. Since her last album, the wildly successful ANTI, was released in 2016, many have been grilling the bad gal on when her next release would be. Most recently, on December 19th, 2019, she posted a video of a dog dancing to the track ‘Jump Around,’ and captioned it “update: me listening to R9 by myself and refusing to release it.”
The unwritten laws of an Internet world such as Instagram dictate, to me at least, that comment and caption cancel each other out. Rihanna herself said she was “refusing to release” her heavily anticipated album, yet many fans still hold on to hope. Then, the rest of 2019 came and went, and here we are, in a new decade, void of any new Rihanna music.
The notion that an artist could “refuse to release” music stirred a deep well of confusion and betrayal on stan Twitter. Jokes about how Rihanna would not release her music turned into jokes about breaking into her house to listen to the new album, which turned into threats. Seemingly harmless Internet threats veiled with crafty use of current meme-age, sure, but threats nonetheless.
At first, I found myself laughing at said crafty use of meme-age, but with a brief shift of perspective, I sat back for a second and asked myself, in what world do we find humor in blatant threats towards people? Why has Twitter seemingly accepted this notion that artists owe us their work, and to withhold that is to commit wrongdoing?
Obviously, this is Twitter, and I’m not trying to be deep about the chaotic hive-mind attacks we find on this social media platform that is becoming Tumblr 2.0. And as much as I’m trying to critique stan culture here, I love Twitter. One of the reasons I find so much entertainment in it is because it is a beastly community of Internet disarray, and can never be accurately described or defined, try as the thinkpiece writer or scholar (or WECB Staff Member) may.
The problem with the reaction to Rihanna’s lack of release is not Twitter, or even stan culture, but the concept of what artists owe us. The notion that we could take offense to a creator enjoying their own work privately, without the public, is absurd. Having almost constant access to their art seems to be something we take for granted.
Rihanna has acknowledged the growing turmoil in her fanbase as a result of her lack of new music. Fans coined the term “R9” for her next album themselves, asking her about the release for almost four years now. In 2019, as she was rumored to have been chosen for the halftime Super Bowl show, she responded in an interview: “I still got an album to finish. You gonna ask me about Super Bowl? My fans about to have my neck." Once again, that was a joke I might have easily dismissed, but it does bring up an alarming aspect of culture.
Just this week, her Instagram comments were full of demands for an album, to many of which Rihanna replied with well-deserved retorts: “im sick of this where the album sis,” she wrote in one of her replies. She’s been blatant in her resistance to her fan’s demands, yet still, they are spewed relentlessly by a group of people that are either disturbingly unaware or simply do not care about the artist’s desires.
Consumer demands for artistic work are nothing new. When looking at the rigorous release schedules of music legends like Frank Sinatra, Aretha Franklin, or Prince, we can see that capitalistic motivation has pushed musicians well before the Internet increased our desire for instant gratification.
Social media didn’t change anything in regards to that, but it did bring audiences much closer to their favorite artists. While Sinatra might have been under pressure from executives at his record label, on top of that, Rihanna is exposed to millions of fans with direct access to her comments. As I’m sure we have all experienced, social media has an effect on people that leads us to forget that on the other side of the comments section is a person—A rich, talented, ethereally beautiful person, but a person nonetheless. Rihanna started a wildly successful makeup company, designed inclusive lingerie and clothing, starred in a short film, and released a book, all the while working on her heavily anticipated album; she has given her audience so much!
The way people demand work from a creator, on their terms and their terms only, is incredibly upsetting. The relationship between artists and their fans should not be of the Black Mirror Ashley-O, late-stage capitalist dream where art becomes nothing more than output. It should be a relationship of appreciation, and ultimately, connection. Demanding that Rihanna release something she doesn’t want to is leading us down a path where art loses its significance.