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Anti is the upcoming eight studio album by Barbadian recording artist Rihanna, set to be released through Westbury Road and Roc Nation.

Background
In November 2012, Rihanna released her seventh studio album, Unapologetic, a pop and R&B album that incorporates elements of dubstep and EDM. It received mixed reviews from music critics and debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 chart with sales of over 238,000 copies; it became Rihanna's first album to top the chart and her highest opening week in the country to date. The album spawned seven singles, including the international hits, "Diamonds" and "Stay". The former topped music charts in over twenty countries, including the United States, where it became Rihanna's twelfth number one single on the Billboard Hot 100 and tied her with Madonna and The Supremes for the fifth-most number one singles in the chart's history. At the 56th Annual Grammy Awards, Unapologetic won the accolade for Best Urban Contemporary Album. As of 2013, the album has sold over four million copies, worldwide.

To further promote the album, in 2013, Rihanna embarked on her fifth concert tour, the Diamonds World Tour. The tour visited the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia with 96 shows in total. The Diamonds World Tour was a commercial success; on Pollstar's year-end chart of the top 100 grossing worldwide tours, from January 1 to December 31, 2013, the Diamonds World Tour was placed at number six with a gross of $141.9 million from the shows that were played during the given time period. Tickets were sold with an average gross of $1,867,248 per city. In May 2014, Complex magazine reported that Rihanna has left her label, Def Jam Recordings and signed to Roc Nation (which is owned by American rapper Jay-Z), for both management and label. Rihanna starred alongside Jim Parsons, Steve Martin and Jennifer Lopez in the animated movie home, Home, released in March 2015. That same month, she released the soundtrack for the film through her label Westbury Road and Roc Nation.

Development
The span gap between Rihanna's last studio album, Unapologetic and R8 is the longest wait between records in her music career. On October 8, 2014 she posted a picture of her in the studio, working on the album. American singer Ne-Yo, and also her frequent collaborator, in an interview with Capital Xtra on November 11, regarding R8 said, "The stuff I've heard is absolutely incredible. I can’t speak on what it sounds like because I’ll get in trouble. But I definitely feel like people are gonna enjoy it. Anybody that's a Rihanna fan is gonna stay a Rihanna fan, and anybody that's not might become a Rihanna fan ... just gear up for it." On November 19, 2014, while on the red carpet for the premiere of director Andrew Jenks documentary, It's Not Over, Rihanna told Entertainment Tonight, that her album should come out "very soon". She further said, "I'm really excited about the music that we've been working on, so I can't wait for people to hear it."

Rihanna invited "hundreds" of her fans in Paris to participate in a promotional video shot on December 18. It was reported that the clip might be associated with the release of R8. On January 21, 2015, American rapper Kanye West made a surprise appearance at the iHeartMedia Music Summit, where he spoke about his career, played a few upcoming songs, and concluded with a collaboration with Rihanna that "featured acoustic guitar and a big, soaring chorus and melody with a massive hook. He then slammed his laptop shut and walked offstage to a standing ovation". Earlier, on January 2, recording artist and producer Ty Dolla Sign gave an interview to Billboard magazine where it revealed that he, West, Rihanna and English musician Paul McCartney worked on a track together, which was yet to receive its final title.

On February 8 during his Grammy Awards red carpet interview, West explained how the collaboration came to fruition: "I'm executive producer of Rihanna's album, and I said I'd done a few songs with Paul McCartney and she couldn't get past this record. She had to have it on her album... So now we at the Grammys doing it". West further compared Rihanna's vocals on the song to that of Scottish singer Annie Lennox: "I feel like she has this type of energy in her vocals. And she even brought it to another level of like soul and heart and artistry". During a press for Home, on March 16, Rihanna told MTV News that she recorded a lot of songs for the album, "that are really, really big songs. From the jump, they just blow up. And I wanted to kind of get back to — not that they werent real music, but I just wanted to focus on things that felt real, that felt soulful, that felt forever." She also stated that she wanted to record songs that could be "timeless" and she could perform them in a span of 15 years, "Not any songs that were burnt out. I find that when I get on stage now, I don’t want to perform a lot of my songs. They don’t feel like me." In an interview with V magazine, Rihanna described the album as both "soulful" and "aggressive" at the same time whether is in a musical, lyrical or vocal context.

Writing and recording
On May 16, 2014, in an interview with VH1, Australian singer and songwriter Sia Furler stated that she recently gave a new song to Rihanna, "Like as soon as I played it for her manager, he flipped over it and [when] he left the house I felt sick. I was like, 'F–k.' It was going to be on my record, but he was over and I was playing him loads of jams." Canadian musician Grimes and her frequent collaborator Blood Diamonds, wrote a song for Rihanna which she turned down, making Grimes to record the song for her own studio album. On June 11, American rapper Big Sean posted a picture on his official Instagram account; the picture featured him and Rihanna in the studio with a caption "#2014". According to MTV News, the collaboration was recorded either for his third studio album or R8. In late June, the Roc Nation-signed songwriter, Alicia Renee, posted a photo on Instagram with her and Rihanna in the studio. Renee cried when she heard Rihanna performing one of the songs she wrote for her. In an interview with Digital Spy, on July 7, Canadian artist and songwriter, Kiesza, told that Rihanna recorded two or three songs she wrote, but was not sure whether they will make the final track listing. According to her, "The one that Rihanna has cut is one that I never in a million years expected her to pick out, so it was super interesting. It just shows that people want to evolve and try new things." On September 15, record producer DJ Mustard confirmed that he and Rihanna collaborated on a song for R8, "We haven't got our club record just yet but we have a ballad that I really like and that she likes too. I did a couple of songs with her, we're still working, we’re still in the early stages, trying to come together with a massive record." Scottish DJ Calvin Harris, who previously penned Rihanna's 2011 single, "We Found Love", told UK's KISS FM that he and American singer Tinashe wrote a song for R8 which Rihanna later rejected. English singer Natalia Kills, on December 12, posted on her official Twitter account that she has worked on a song for Rihanna.

Rihanna together with British producer Alex da Kid and American rock group X Ambassadors co-wrote "American Oxygen". The writing of the song started in 2014, and it was written and produced over a course of a year span. It was originally conceived by Kid, who sent the beats of the song to Sam Harris of X Ambassadors who started writing some lyrics. In an interview with Billboard magazine Harris told how "American Oxygen" really stuck with him and he started the chorus with a couple lines he wrote, "We worked on just that chorus for like three or four months, going back and forth, back and forth.... It goes to show you that sometimes these songs just appear out of nowhere and sometimes you just have to go at it like a block of marble and you're chipping away at it." According to him, the inspiration for starting to write "American Oxygen" was the 1984 single "Born in the U.S.A." by Bruce Springsteen. When Rihanna got a hold on the song, she and Kid started adjusting the song. The singer co-wrote the verses together with Harris and Kid, "I wrote one thing and then Alex and Rihanna had the idea to turn it into this song about an immigrant story, coming to this country as an outsider... That was her idea, really, hers and Alex's, to turn it into that kind of song."

Songs
"FourFiveSeconds" is an acoustic pop and soul pop song,  that has a stripped back feel to it, and it incorporates elements of country and folk. Sharan Shetty of Slate stated that the song is about "heartbreak and redemption", while a Yahoo! News reviewer noted that it is about "personal travails and confusion". "American Oxygen" is a dubstep-influenced ballad, with a patriotic lyrical content, reminiscent of the one of Jay Z and Alicia Keys' 2009 single, "Empire State of Mind". In the song, Rihanna sings about a new America and chasing the American dream. "Bitch Better Have My Money" is a trap song; according to Jim Farber of New York Daily News the song is reminiscent of the works by West, particularly the half-sang and half-rapped vocals. Jason Lipshutz of Billboard noted that the lyrical content of the song sounded inspired by Beyoncé's 2014 single "Flawless".

Singles
"FourFiveSeconds", featuring West and McCartney, was released as the lead single from R8. On January 24, Rihanna posted the song on her official website, Rihannanow.com, and was made available for digital download on January 24 via the iTunes Store. A CD single featuring "FourFiveSeconds" and its music video was released on February 27 in Germany. "FourFiveSeconds" received rave reviews from music critics who praised Rihanna's and West's new direction, their vocals, and the song's minimalistic production. Commercially, it peaked at number four on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart and gave Rihanna her twenty sixth top-ten on the chart while McCartney made a record by ending the longest break between top-ten songs on the chart. The song also peaked at number one on the US Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. Internationally, the song reached number one in Australia, Denmark, New Zealand and Sweden and reached the top five in Canada, France, Ireland and the United Kingdom. The music video was directed by Dutch photographer duo Inez and Vinoodh in New York City. Shot in black-and-white, it was met with positive reviews from critics who commended the video's simplicity and compared it to the works of Herb Ritts and Xavier Dolan.

"Bitch Better Have My Money" was released on March 26 via the iTunes Store worldwide. On March 25 via her official Twitter account, Rihanna posted, "rihannaNOW.com #R8 #BBHMM #March26". Subsequently she posted, the artwork of the song on her official Instagram account. The black-and-white cover features Rihanna with highlighted brows while wearing a "motorcycle" jacket, the title of the song is placed on the left side and is written in Braille. Upon release critics gave the song lukewarm reviews; although they found the song catchy and ready to be played in clubs, they thought it was a step down from "FourFiveSeconds". It received similar performance commercially; it reached the top twenty in over twelve countries, including number 19 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart. On the later, it became Rihanna's 35th top twenty single, making her the third overall artist to achieve the plateau, only behind Elvis Presley and Madonna.

"American Oxygen" was first featured on commercials which promoted the 2015 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament. Later, the song was made available for streaming on April 5, 2015, via Tidal. On April 14, it was made available for digital download via the iTunes Store. The accompanying music video for "American Oxygen" was directed by Darren Craig of the Uprising Creative. It premiered on April 6 exclusively on Tidal. Most important moments of the American history such as immigration in the country, the Apollo 11, the 1968 Olympics Black Power salute, Beatlemania, Occupy Wall Street, September 11 attacks and Black Lives Matter are presented throughout the clip. According to a writer of Capital FM, the video shows the patriotic side of Rihanna and the struggle experienced by the black people in the country and their success.

Promotion
Rihanna, McCartney and West performed "FourFiveSeconds" at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards held on February 8, 2015, at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. Chris Payne of Billboard named the performance as one of the best moments of the ceremony and praised Rihanna's vocals, "Let's face it – seeing this improbable collaboration in person is the main reason many tuned in. There are so many ways three huge personas can get in the way, but Rihanna, 'Ye, and Sir Paul knew how to bring this one to life". Rihanna performed "Bitch Better Have My Money" for the first time at the 2nd iHeartRadio Music Awards on March 29, 2015. During the performance the singer wore a short black dress accompanied with green Versace coat and high boots of the same color. The performance featured her emerging from a helicopter; after delivering the lyrics she left the microphone and "broke out into dance". New York Daily News praised the Rihanna's entrance on stage and wrote "As usual, the singing sensation did not disappoint and delivered a high-energy, show-stopping performance!" On April 4, Rihanna performed at the Final Four of the March Madness 2015 which was held in Indianapolis, Indiana. During the performance, she sang "American Oxygen" for the first time, as well as, "Bitch Better Have My Money" and "FourFiveSeconds". The concert also featured Rihanna's older hits, such as "Rockstar 101", "Stay", "We Found Love" and "Diamonds".

Recorded songs

 * "FourFiveSeconds" (feat. Kanye West and Paul McCartney)
 * "Bitch Better Have My Money"
 * "American Oxygen" (produced by Alex da Kid)
 * "Higher"
 * "A Night" (contains a sample from "Only If for a Night" by Florence + The Machine)
 * "Kiss It Better" (produced by Glass John and Jeff Bhasker)
 * "James Joint (Interlude)"
 * "Promised"