Rihanna is no stranger to a headline.
She’s found herself in the news cycle for everything from her record-breaking business prowess to her former ‘thing’ with Drake that no-one quite understood.
Image credit: Roc Nation
This week, however, she’s in the press for a slightly more obscure reason. That reason being: her fans are convinced she’s sending them hints about new music through her hair colour.
As Refinery29 shares, 31-year-old multi-hyphenate launched her Fenty fashion house with LVMH last week. For this major achievement (RiRi is the first woman to launch an original brand with the conglomerate, and the first woman of colour leading an LVMH Maison) Rihanna chose to debut a new hairdo. The performer and businesswoman dyed her hair red, and her fans are *convinced* there’s a hidden message in the move.
According to the ‘Navy’ (Ri’s fan base), the hair change-up – which she showed off at the BET Awards, too – is indicative of new music coming our way. She wore her hair in a similar shade back in 2010 when she dropped the album Loud, and people are taking that as proof enough.
While, yes, there is a *chance* the burgundy ‘do is linked to Rihanna’s highly-anticipated (seriously, people are begging for this thing) album, it seems more likely that folks are just desperately clutching at scarlet-hued straws at this point.
The fact is, this woman is BU-SY. And if what the musician has outright told us is anything to go by, we’re going to be waiting a while for tunes – as disappointing as that may be.
Chatting with Sarah Paulson for Interview Mag earlier this month, Rihanna answered the question fans are desperate to get an answer to:
“How much longer do we have to wait [for a new album]?”
And her honest reply was:
“I wish I knew. I have blocked off a solid period of time for the studio next month.”
She went on to explain that she feels everyone’s frustrations, but her schedule is too packed to roll out a new album as quickly as she once did:
“I will work all day in a meeting, leave that meeting at 1 or 2am, and then come home with a tiny group of staff and work until 5, 7am,” she told Paulson.
“It’s the reason why an album isn’t being spat out like it used to. I used to be in the studio, only the studio, for three months straight, and an album would come out. Now, it’s like a carousel. I do fashion one day, lingerie the next, beauty the next, then music the next. It’s like having a bunch of kids and you need to take care of them all.”
So, look. Are we convinced the red hair is some kind of cryptic code for “album release on the way”?
No.
But we guess there’s some comfort to be found in the knowledge that RiRi is giving you her creative artistry in a whole host of other ways at the moment. And she’s pushing for change around inclusivity in the fashion and beauty industries as she does that. Which is pretty bloody excellent.
Image credit: Warner Bros.
Probably the best part of it all, though, is that we *know* if Rihanna thinks the next album is fun, it’s going to be full of the best damn bops of your life.