With the Super Bowl 2 days away, many are anticipating Rihanna’s return to the big stage. It has been 7 years since she released an album and went on tour. Even though within those 7 years, she grew her Savage X Fenty brand to astronomical heights, became a billionaire, and a mother, people are still waiting on new Rihanna music, only raising the stakes for her upcoming halftime performance. With that said, here are 5 things that we at The Source want to see during Rih’s performance.
1. Jay-Z Guest Appearance During “Run This Town”
“Run This Town” is arguably one of the best ensemble tracks ever to be released. When it dropped in 2009, the track reached #2 on Billboard and made a statement, with Hov even saying that he, Rihanna, and Kanye are on the song because they run this town. Little would we know, over a decade later, all three would become billionaires, despite one person on the song recently losing that status. But nonetheless, we think Rih should perform the track and have Jay-Z come out to do a verse, after all, there were reports of him helping Rihanna with her performance. We’d love to see Ye come and do his verse but we can only imagine the PR nightmare the NFL would face.
2. A Tour Announcement Following The Performance
Even though this wouldn’t take place during the halftime show, we want to get a tour announcement shortly following the performance. Rihanna’s last tour was in 2016 following her critically acclaimed album Anti. There has even been some speculation and rumors floating around saying that a world tour will be announced after the halftime show. According to PageSix, insiders are saying that Rih is gearing up to go on a world tour and has been hidden so well that even people in her crew don’t even know about it.
3. An New Album Announcement or Release
Much like the tour announcement, we’d love to get an announcement about a new Rihanna album after her performance. In the last 7 years, there’s no telling how many songs she’s recorded. The last song we got from her was just last year when she released “Lift Me Up,” from the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever soundtrack. Nonetheless, if there are rumors circulating about a tour drop, that must mean that there is some music to drop soon as well.
4. A Drake Guest Appearance
Some of the most memorable moments in a Super Bowl Halftime Show are the guest appearances. Remember what it was like to see Beyoncé come out during Super Bowl 50? We totally even forgot Coldplay was the main performer. We already said we’d like a Jay-Z guest appearance, but a Drake one might take the cake. Given the two’s history, both inside and outside of music, seeing them perform one of their songs on the stage together would be a great, and probably messy moment to witness. But it would show a lot of growth out of Drake who till this day laments about his exes.
5. A Statement
Rihanna boycotted the NFL in 2016 following the unfair treatment of Colin Kaepernick for kneeling during the national anthem. She said in an interview with Vogue at the time that she had actually been offered to perform at the Super Bowl but turned it down because she felt like she would be a “sellout” if she went forward with the opportunity. Fast forward to 2022, and Rihanna announces that she’s performing at Super Bowl LVII. Granted, things have changed since then, with Kaepernick settling a collusion case against the NFL in 2019 and the league partnering with Roc Nation through the Inspire Change Initiative. But there’s still obvious racism going on within the NFL, take the fact that there are only 3 black head coaches in a Black player-dominated league. There’s no doubt that Jay-Z had a big reason why Rihanna finally decided to perform at a Super Bowl, but the question is did Rihanna simply take the job to just perform and make a grand re-entrance into the spotlight, or will she take the opportunity to make a statement during her performance.
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