A$AP Rocky has a new approach to questions about Rihanna’s music: keep quiet. The rapper joked that sharing an update about her recording sessions had caused trouble at home.
Rocky, 38, was speaking to The Hollywood Reporter at the Academy Museum Gala in Los Angeles on Oct. 17. The interviewer asked about the reaction to comments he had made more than two months earlier.
Those remarks came during the Aug. 5 episode of The Jason Lee Show. Lee traveled to New York for the nearly two-hour conversation, which reached the subject of Rihanna’s recording plans more than 90 minutes in.
Her last studio album, Anti, arrived in 2016. Fans call the anticipated follow-up R9, although Rihanna has not announced an official title, release date or tracklist.
Rocky Joked That Home Was ‘Hell’ After His Comments
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Asked what the next day at home had been like, Rocky laughed and answered, “It was hell.” He added, “Yeah, I shouldn’t have done that,” according to PEOPLE’s account of the exchange. The interviewer offered him a chance to clarify his earlier remarks. “No, I’m gonna mind my business,” Rocky replied.
He Predicted Trouble During His Interview With Jason Lee
Lee had asked whether Rocky’s relationship with Rihanna, their three children and her businesses explained the long wait for another album. Rocky rejected that suggestion and said she was working in the studio at that moment.
“Yeah, I said it. Sorry, babe,” he added, according to Stocktonia. After describing her as busy recording, he seemed to anticipate the attention his answer would attract: “Damn, I’ma get in trouble for this.”
When Lee proposed a joint double album, Rocky rejected the idea, calling it “trash.” He said his experimental rap appealed to a more specialized audience than Rihanna’s music, as LOS40 reported.
The two have recorded together before. Rocky supplied a verse for the 2012 remix of Rihanna’s “Cockiness,” a track from Talk That Talk, as Pitchfork documented when it was released.
Rihanna Compared Her Unreleased Music to 17 Makeup Vaults
During an early October Fenty Beauty TikTok livestream, Rihanna was asked how much music she had stored away. She answered using the brand’s Gloss Bomb Vault as her unit of measurement, according to Hot 97.
“If there are 10 products in the Gloss Bomb Vault, then I have at least 17 vaults,” she said. That comparison suggests at least 170 recordings, counting one song for each beauty product. She did not identify which tracks were finished or intended for release.
In her 2025 interview with Harper’s Bazaar, Rihanna said she had tried different musical directions throughout eight years of studio work. She described a project unrestricted by genre and not aimed at radio. “I cannot put up anything mediocre,” she said.
Her Recent Singles Have Come From Movie Soundtracks
Rihanna released “Lift Me Up” for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in October 2022. Written with Tems, Ludwig Göransson and director Ryan Coogler, it honored Chadwick Boseman, who played the title character in the first film. Göransson produced the recording, according to Universal Music.
Tems said a conversation with Coogler about the film helped shape the song. She wanted it to evoke an embrace from people she had lost and imagined being able to sing to them about how much she missed them. “Lift Me Up” earned Rihanna and her fellow writers an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song in 2023.
Her soundtrack work continued with “Friend of Mine,” released May 16, 2025, for the animated film Smurfs.