Rihanna is in love. She wants to be a mother “more than anything in life” and marriage (to Hassan Jameel, who she has been dating for two years) is no longer a subject that’s off the cards. “Only God knows that, girl,” the popstar tells Ocean’s Eight colleague Sarah Paulson in conversation for Interview magazine. “We plan and God laughs, right?”
Now 31, she’s worked out how to navigate the various strands of her Fenty business empire, her music career, acting pursuits and philanthropic projects while having a flourishing personal life. “I never used to be this way,” Rihanna tells Paulson. “It’s only the last couple of years that I started to realise that you need to make time for yourself, because your mental health depends on it. If you’re not happy, you’re not going to be happy even doing things that you love doing. It’d feel like a chore. I never want work to feel like a chore.”
Her calendar is populated with bright “P”s, signifying personal days. “Just like I nurture my businesses, I need to nurture [my relationship] as well,” she shares. “I’ll shut things down for two days, three days at a time.”
RiRi will never leave things hanging during this downtime, but works all night beforehand to ensure business decisions keep moving without her. “I don’t have a sleep pattern. I have sleep pockets. I fit it in when I can,” she notes of how she keeps up the momentum. “That’s why I take those personal days so seriously. Because it’s like, ‘You had all of me. I gave you the answers.’”
Rihanna’s ninth album is still in the works owing to the fact she can’t commit her time solely to music. “[My career] is like having a bunch of kids and you need to take care of them all,” she explains. “I wish I knew [how long the album will take to complete]… Music has led me to these other outlets, and to things that I genuinely love.”
With a month blocked out (aside from those designated “P” days) to finesse her new material – “I’ve gotten to the point where I’m like, ‘Even if I don’t have the time to shoot videos, I’m going to put an album out’ – it could be a shorter interlude than expected.
