Rihanna On Savage x Fenty Volume 4, Being a New Mom, and the Super Bowl

The journalist waiting for Rihanna is a trope as tired as it is true, so let’s just get that part out of the way: yes, she arrived at the Savage x Fenty volume 4 set after midnight, for a 9 p.m. call time. No, no one was mad. How could we be? This is Rihanna we’re talking about, one of our newest minted self-made billionaires thanks to her beauty and fashion empire, and she has plans for us: an upcoming Super Bowl performance, some just-released new music (more on that in a minute), the premiere of Savage x Fenty volume 4 on Wednesday, and yes, a brand new baby. She’s busy.

She’s also tired. Which, considering she was taking work calls about new loungewear designs from the delivery room, is fair. Not that she looks tired. “I thought I was gonna get just right back to work and I did,” she said from the soundstage where she took pre-show interviews, perfectly made up and clad in an alligator-embossed Alaïa minidress. “Then I took a little break, and then came back, and now I’m back outside.” It’s a new type of tired, though—this mom-tired. “I used to get tired and just push through and keep going. This is a tired that you have no control over it. Your body is shutting down. And just recently I pushed through three days at the studio in a row—like, slept in the studio—to get a song done because it’s a project that’s really important to me coming out. I believed it and I wanted to be a part of it, so I got it done.” That song, ‘Lift Me Up,’ a lullaby-like ballad in tribute to the life and legacy of Chadwick Boseman written by Tems, Ludwig Göransson, Rihanna, and director Ryan Coogler for Wakanda Forever, which dropped in late October. Variety reported that she has curated the film’s soundtrack, much in the way Kendrick Lamar did for the first Black Panther film. Or as Rihanna trilled again: “We back outside.”

Savage x Fenty Volume 4 premieres on Prime Video on November 9, and features models like Precious Lee, Cara Delevingne, Joan Smalls, Irina Shayk, Zach Miko, and Lara Stone; actors like Marsai Martin, Simu Liu, Damson Idris, Taraji P. Henson, and Abbott Elementary Emmy winner Sheryl Lee Ralph; social media superstars Rickey Thompson and Avani Gregg and musician Bella Poarch; and performances from artists like Anitta, Burna Boy, Don Toliver, and Maxwell. In early November it was revealed that Johnny Depp was also included as part of the cast. (He walks to OutKast’s “So Fresh, So Clean.”) Rihanna was proud of the production, she told Vogue. “It looks so freaking good. It’s beautiful. It is one of those things that you say you want to do and the logistics are impossible but we somehow pulled it off.”