Rihanna Should Celebrate Being a Billionaire by Releasing an Album

Rihanna is officially a billionaire, Forbes reports.

The beauty, fashion, and music icon is now worth an estimated $1.7 billion, according to the outlet, making her the wealthiest female musician on Earth and second wealthiest female entertainer, only behind Oprah Winfrey. She has Fenty Beauty, of which she owns 50%, to thank for $1.4 billion of her fortune. Her lingerie company, Savage x Fenty, has brought in an additional $270 million. The rest of her money comes from her career as a singer and actor. 

And you know how she should celebrate this milestone? By releasing an album! Yes, those stats prove music isn’t the most lucrative endeavor for Rihanna, but when you have $1.7 billion in the bank, who cares? Will I ever have $1.7 billion? No. But will I yearn for a new Rihanna album until the day I get one? Yes. RiRi should bless broke fans like me with the currency of bops. A billion bops for the billion dollars she now has! (Okay, maybe not a billion; I’d settle for, like, 12.) 

I’m not alone in thinking this: 

Of course, Rihanna should release an album only if she wants to. The last big update she gave on a potential new record was in October 2020, when she told the Associated Press she’s had “tons of writing camps.” (That’s where she and songwriters get together to workshop ideas.)

“You do pop, you did this genre, you do that, you do radio, but now it’s just like, what makes me happy?” she said. “I just want to have fun with music. Everything is so heavy. The world that we live in is a lot. It’s overwhelming every single day. And with the music, I’m using that as my outlet.”

She continued, “What do I feel personally? What do I want to put out, and as an artist, how do I want to play it with my art? How do I want to interpret that? How do I want to reimagine it? Because it’s been so structured before.”