Rihanna’s performance at the 2023 Super Bowl Halftime Show finally happened on February 12 in Arizona’s State Farm Stadium, and you can see it all below. She launched the act with “Bitch Better Have My Money” while floating on a transparent platform in her first public performance in five years. She continued with a medley of songs including “We Found Love,” “Where Have You Been,” “Only Girl (In the World),” “Where Have You Been,” “Wild Thoughts,” “Pour It Up,” “Umbrella,” “Diamonds,” and more. The video is below.
During the performance, Rihanna sported a red jumpsuit with a red bustier underneath. Her silhouette has led some people to believe that she may be pregnant. Later, her representative verified that she was really expecting.
A group of dancers wearing white hooded coats, sweatpants, and sunglasses crowded around the vocalist throughout the performance. On their own floating stages, the dancers started the version before crowding around Rihanna in timed choreography. The transparent platforms changed positions during the performance, forming various shapes such as a v, a diagonal line, and more. Rihanna returned to her own stage and ascended into the skies to close the performance.
With “Lift Me Up” and “Born Again,” two songs she contributed to the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever film, Rihanna made her first musical comeback since the ANTI era. Golden Globes and Academy Award nominations for Best Original Song went to “Lift Me Up.” Rihanna is also working on an album with reggae influences.
Speaking at a pre-Bowl press conference, she said last week that she is
“Open to exploring, discovering, creating things that are new, things that are different, things that are off, weird, might never make sense to my fans. I just want to play; I want to have fun with music.”
Since ANTI, Rihanna has focused on her Fenty clothing brand, which is now a division of LVMH. In 2019, she released a 504-page “visual autobiography” and was featured in Childish Gambino’s Guava Island. She appeared in Ocean’s 8, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, “Bates Motel,” and Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping as a movie star (2016). Last May, she gave birth to her first kid with A$AP Rocky.