Rihanna Makes History as Female Artist With Most Diamond-Certified Tracks
RiRi, the new Queen of Barbados, has added another title to her name.
The “Diamonds” singer now holds the record for having the most Diamond-stamped releases by a female artist according to the Recording Industry Association of America.
On Friday, the 36-year-old superstar and her label, Roc Nation, were showered with four new Diamond certifications. Among the ranks are “Umbrella” feat Jay Z, “Work” feat Drake, the mid-tempo mood piece “Needed Me,” and the 2013 classic “Stay” feat Mikky Ekko, which surpassed 1 billion streams on Youtube in January 2022.
She previously went Diamond for “Diamonds” (10x platinum). The mother-of-two also earned shining new plaques for “The Way You Lie”—a collaborative hit with Eminem (13x platinum) and “We Found Love” feat Calvin Harris (10x platinum).
Earlier, Rihanna’s three Diamond releases placed her on even footing with several other female artists but the latest development pushed her ahead of her peers.
She took to X to revel in her achievement. Penning “ain’t no back n forth”, she inferred how she has left the competition behind. With no less than seven certifications under her belt (six as a lead artist), there’s no denying her success.
Her fans, called the Navy, celebrated the milestone on social media. They used the opportunity to remind the “Don’t Stop the Music” songstress that they’ve been eagerly awaiting Rihanna’s new album, R9, since her last release in 2016.
An X user reflected on the last time she released an album, “Obama was president, the UK hadn’t voted on Brexit, TikTok wasn’t out yet, and Olivia Rodrigo was 12.”
Anti, her 8th album, allowed her to have the most number of Top 10 singles on the Billboard Hot 100. In the process, she dethroned no less than King of Pop Michael Jackson.
The singer has since been busy building her makeup line and embracing motherhood with partner A$AP Rocky who she has been with since 2020.
Aside from these pursuits, the Fenty Beauty founder admitted to a rather complex songwriting process which might be partly responsible for the album’s delay.
In an April 2024 conversation with Interview Magazine, she described, “I have a lot of visual ideas. It’s weird. My brain is working backward right now. I usually have the music first, and the music leads me into all of these visual opportunities, and now I’m having all of these visuals, and I don’t have the songs for them yet, but maybe that’s the key, this time. Maybe the visual ideas are leading me to the songs that I need to make,” the 9-time Grammy Award winner confessed.
She also mentioned her high expectations when creating songs. “There’s this pressure that I put on myself. That if it’s not better than that [Anti] then it is not even worth it,” the megastar shared with British Vogue in March 2023.
The Barbados-born artist admits that the creative process doesn’t have to be that complicated. “…Because music is an outlet and a space to create, and you can create whatever. It doesn’t have to even be on any scale. It just has to be something that feels good. It could just be a song that I like. It literally could be that simple,” she concluded.
While we’re waiting on her next album, we’re happy to tune into her old songs, the tracks that made her one of 21st century’s most prominent recording artists.
