Rihanna Famously Declined Headlining The Super Bowl Halftime Show In Protest. Then Motherhood Changed Her Mind.

Another major motivator was Rihanna’s 9-month-old son, whose name she and A$AP Rocky have not shared publicly. Becoming a mother last year made her realize that “nothing is impossible.”

“It’s this knowing that you can do anything,” she told the magazine. “Even things that seem the craziest, like, ‘I’m going to say yes to the Super Bowl in the middle of postpartum?’”

But that wasn’t the biggest surprise. Rihanna eventually learned that she’d be headlining while pregnant with her second child. As anyone who watched the Super Bowl knows by now, Rihanna unveiled a baby bump during the big show. Representatives for the singer later confirmed that she is pregnant. 

She told British Vogue that she did not know she would be carrying another child when she agreed to take the stage, let alone taking the stage for the first time in seven years.

“Seven years! From zero to Super Bowl? That’s mental,” Rihanna said. “What the heck am I thinking? But you’re geeked on a challenge like that because you know what your body just did.”

The last motivator to take on the high-stakes show was her fans, who are barely surviving the Rihanna music drought. She wanted to put on a show for people who missed her music. With a list of infinite hits impossible to fit into 13 minutes, Rihanna said she opted out of costume changes to instead focus on giving her fans what they really wanted: to hear her sing. She managed to pack 12 songs into the show.

The singing won’t stop, if Rihanna can help it. Of course, the singer also told the magazine about her long (long) awaited follow-up album to 2016’s Anti. She’s thinking it’ll drop this year.

“Like, honestly, it’d be ridiculous if it’s not this year,” she said. “But I just want to have fun. I just want to make music and make videos.”