Rihanna shattered another glass ceiling on Billboard 200 chart when her album ANTI clocks 200 weeks on the chart.
Rihanna may call herself a bad girl, but the Barbadian singer has done really good with her last album. ANTI was released in January 2016 and has now spent more than 200 weeks in the Billboard 200 album chart, setting a record. The “Kiss It Better” singer’s eighth studio album initially entered the chart at number 27, but soon peaked at the top with 166,000 album units sold in its first full tracking week. Samsung then purchased no less than a million copies as part of a free download deal, causing the album to be certified platinum.
Based on both digital and retail sales, the Billboard 200 has been around for 61 years. Throughout the six decades, Rihanna has now become the very first black woman to have an album stick around on the chart for so long.
Although fans still seem to be listening and buying Anti, many are wondering just when Riri is going to put out something new?! The 31-year-old previously stated that she had begun work on her follow-up just months after Anti’s release, but almost four years later, we’re still waiting.
Moving away from her regular style of R&B and pop, Rihanna revealed in May that her ninth studio album would be a reggae project. She is an island girl, after all.
.@rihanna's 'ANTI' has now spent 200 weeks on the Billboard 200.
It's the first album by a black female artist to reach this milestone in the chart's history.
— chart data (@chartdata) December 2, 2019
British singer Shakka is believed to be involved in the album, which he referred to as “absolutely insane,” while Rihanna and co-songwriters Collin Edwards, Monique Lawrence, and Alexander Ogunmokun registered a song titled Private Loving in August.
? #R9 alert: Rihanna confirmed on Instagram that her new album is dropping in 2019 ? pic.twitter.com/oSPfEqbhA9
— Rihanna News (@TeamOfRihanna) December 22, 2018
The Fenty entrepreneur confirmed to fans that R9, as it’s been dubbed, would come out in 2019. With less than a month to go before we hit 2020, Riri better get on that train super fast.
