Alright, so unless you’ve been living under a rock this past week, you’re probably aware that Rihanna’s eighth album, “ANTi,” was released this week. Before I go any further, I want it to be known that I have not yet purchased the album, and I won’t be doing so until later this week (Feb. 5th) when it receives it’s physical release.

Lets backtrack a little…

Rihanna’s fans (The Navy) have been anxiously awaiting this album for over three years now, and the entire process of getting this album released has just been messy. The singer switched record labels from Def Jam, to Roc Nation, and fans received three singles throughout the course of 2015, including, “Four-Five-Seconds,” “Bitch Better Have My Money,” and “American Oxygen.” Typically an artist will release 1-2 singles for promo, then soon after, an album is released; this however was not the case for Rihanna.

Rih-rih first announced the album’s title, “ANTi,” along with the album cover back in October of 2015. In November, she revealed that she was going on a world tour. This (in my opinion) is entirely backwards as well. Why on earth would an artist release tickets, and dates, for a show that has no album (or release date) anywhere in site? Die-hard Navy fans of course, quickly jumped on these tickets.

Another month goes by [still no new info on ANTi‘s release], and what is Rihanna doing? She’s promoting the hell out of Samsung’s new Galaxy phones. (WHHHHY?!?!) The artist did a series of 8 commercials with the company, promoting both the phones, and her new album. They called this campaign #ANTiDiary. I watched all of the commercials as they were strategically released, and personally, I just didn’t get it. They were kinda spooky/mysterious, each leaving a cliff-hanger so you’d want to watch the next.. BUT, I wasn’t understanding how they related to her album.

Now that you’re all caught up, let’s get back to this week. On Wednesday, Jan. 27th, Rihanna released her first single from ANTi, “Work,” which features rapper, Drake. Fans instantly became confused because Work was being marketed as the “first single,” when Rihanna had already released three singles the previous year that were supposedly in support of this same album. Had all her previous material been scrapped? Did she decided to go in an entirely new direction musically? It was all really confusing. Then, later the same day, the album’s track-list suddenly appeared on streaming service TIDAL. It was quickly taken down; however, within a few more hours, the album was uploaded in full to TIDAL. Rihanna soon after jumped to twitter to announce the release of her long-awaited LP, and gave fans a code where they could download her new album for free for 24-hours.

SIDENOTE: This entire process just feels really messy to me. Maybe this
album release was planned? But in my opinion, it feels like the album was
about to leak online, and Rihanna’s team had no other choice but to release
the album as quickly as they could.

This seems awesome, right? In a sense, yes. Fans are finally able to get Rihanna’s music; however, the way these downloads are being reported isn’t quite fair to other artists who are struggling to successfully have a #1 album. After the 24-hour period, RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) reported that Rihanna’s album had been certified “Platinum” for selling 1 million copies. Turns out, part of Rihanna’s deal with Samsung was that they would pay her 25 million dollars, to give away 1 million copies of the her latest album. Billboard quickly responded on this, and stated that they, and Neilsen Soundscan (the company who tracks/reports album sales), would NOT count the 1 million downloads towards their “Hot 200” chart, which could potentially cause Rihanna to miss out on having ANTi debut at #1 on this week’s chart.

The controversy here is that there are artists out there like Meghan Trainor, Selena Gomez, Tori Kelly, and more, who are releasing single after single, going on talk shows, releasing music videos, and doing everything they can to get their music out there. It often takes artists months, or even years to receive a “Platinum” certification from RIAA, and many people feel Rihanna used her fame/money to, in a sense, “purchase” herself a #1 Platinum album.

How do you feel about this? Do you agree with Billboard, or do you think Rihanna’s 1 million downloads SHOULD be accounted for, since after all, they were “purchased.” The purchase just happened to be by one company, instead of 1 million individual fans.

Does this change your opinion of Rihanna at all, or could you care less, and you’re just here for the music? Let me know in the comments below, and don’t forget to check out Rihanna’s new album ANTi, now on iTunes, and in stores this Friday, Feb.5th.