Rihanna Makes Music History in America

It's been a while since Rihanna last released a new album, but that hasn't stopped her making history.

As per Rolling Stone, the music icon has become the first woman in the history of the music industry to surpass 200 million RIAA singles certifications.

That puts her third on the all-time list, trailing behind only Drake and Morgan Wallen. Rihanna's total is now 200.5 million units, with Drake on top with 277.5 million, followed by Wallen on 215 million.

RIAA, the trade organisation which certifies gold, platinum, and diamond sales and streaming awards, used to simply tabulate the number of physical singles shipped to retailers in the pre-digital era; upon the arrival of iTunes, it measured paid downloads of songs; now, however, it counts 150 on-demand streams as the equivalent of a single purchase of a digital music file.

Which is why today's chart is dominated by streaming favourites such as the aforementioned Drake, Wallen, and Rihanna, alongside the likes of Luke Combs and Kanye West.

What makes Rihanna's inclusion so remarkable, though, is that she hasn't released an album — or even toured — since a decade ago in 2016.

She did play the Super Bowl halftime show in 2023, as well as the occasional private event, but that's about it. On the recording front, she made "Lift Me Up" for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022) and "Friends of Mine" for Smurfs (2025), but her last studio album, Anti, dropped in January 2016.

Rihanna's inclusion, then, is down to classic hits such as "Umbrella", "Don't Stop the Music", and "We Found Love" garnering huge streaming numbers.

Rihanna has been working on her follow-up album to Anti at her own pace for several years now.

After initially telling fans the album was going to be "reggae-inspired", she later changed her tune.

“There’s no genre now,” she told Harper’s Bazaar last year. “That’s why I waited. Every time, I was just like, ‘No, it’s not me. It’s not right. It’s not matching my growth. It’s not matching my evolution. I can’t do this. I can’t stand by this. I can’t perform this for a year on tour.'”