Rihanna drops eighth studio album, ‘Anti,’ on Tidal

Rihanna released?ANTI? on Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, on the streaming service.

Rihanna’s eagerly-awaited eighth studio album comes just one day after she premiered her new single Work.

A tidal wave of leaks of songs and snippets from ANTI hit social media and blog sites minutes after eagle-eyed RiRi fans spotted the accidentally uploaded album. But, like with Jay Z’s Magna Carta Holy Grail Samsung deal (which also offered up one million free downloads to fans), the downloads of Rihanna’s new album will not count toward the Billboard 200.

Yahoo! reports that the reason behind the two-month delay of Rihanna’s latest album release could be a marketing move to stay out of Adele’s release of “25”.

Though for the week, “Anti” remains streaming exclusively on Tidal, Rihanna has already chosen to give away a select few free download codes (available even to non-subscribers of Tidal) through a Tweet.

The song was teased earlier this month by both Drake and Rihanna, who previously collaborated on single’s such as his “Take Care” and her “What’s My Name”.

However, it is unclear how Rihanna will fare on the charts as her album is not available for conventional purchase.

Now she’s broken her silence and thanked all her fans for their love for the album and said the praise was the “most rewarding feeling”.

Produced by Boi-1da, the track is an of-the-moment pop banger that asks what would happen if you combined a DJ Mustard-inspired beat with the tropical house production that was ever-present in Justin Bieber’s album “Purpose”. A 16-track deluxe version will be released on Friday, January 29th. It doesn’t feature any of last year’s singles, including the great “Bitch Better Have My Money” (or “FourFiveSeconds” or “American Oxygen”).

Track nine on the album is called Same Ol’ Mistakes and is a cover of the Aussie band’s track New Person, Same Old Mistakes. But it didn’t become part of the album either.