While out in Barbados during the time of the interview, RiRi said she was relaxing on her home turf after flying out for a concert. It was her first time seeing one of her favorite childhood musicians in 20 years after he’d been locked up, so she came to see him in concert with family and friends:

“I never used to be this way. It’s only the last couple years that I started to realize that you need to make time for yourself, because your mental health depends on it. If you’re not happy, you’re not going to be happy even doing things that you love doing. It’d feel like a chore. I never want work to feel like a chore. My career is my purpose, and it should never feel like anything other than a happy place. I’ve made little things a big deal, like going for a walk or going to the grocery store. I got into a new relationship, and it matters to me. It was like, “I need to make time for this.” Just like I nurture my businesses, I need to nurture this as well. I’ll shut things down for two days, three days at a time. On my calendar we now have the infamous “P,” which means personal days. This is a new thing.”

Rih also revealed that she doesn’t have a sleep schedule either, but instead calls them “sleep pockets,” meaning she’ll sleep whenever she can. Presumably, those personal days are occupied for rest as well.

Since taking on her new endeavors outside of music, Rihanna hasn’t placed the tunes on the backburner, but does have to line them up with the rest of her priorities. Before, she said, she’d be in the studio for three months uninterrupted then drop a project. “Now, it’s like a carousel,” she described. “I do fashion one day, lingerie the next, beauty the next, then music the next. It’s like having a bunch of kids and you need to take care of them all.”

Recently, she confirmed her next project as a reggae undertaking and has even teased the Navy with studio appearance pop-ups on her Instagram. When Paulson asked how much longer we’d need to wait, the perfectionist in Rih had a pretty good reason for the delay:

“It really does suck that it can’t just come out, because I’m working on a really fun one right now. I’m really happy with a lot of the material we have so far, but I am not going to put it out until it’s complete. It makes no sense to rush it, but I want it out. I’ve gotten to the point where I’m like, ‘Even if I don’t have the time to shoot videos, I’m going to put an album out.’”

Rihanna has always had thick skin, she said, and developed it back when she was a child. Thus, internet comments don’t get under it, and never really have:

“I have to say, I’ve always had pretty tough skin—even as a little girl, which was completely due to my parents. They never sheltered me in any way. They would tease me, and I would tease them right back. By the time I got to school, I always had this feeling like the kids were stupid. Maybe that was god’s way of preparing me for what my life was going to be like. I don’t feel any way about people’s comments. I remember being a kid and being like, “Wow! I’m in a chat room. I can say whatever I want. They don’t know how old I am. They don’t know who I am, or where I am.” There’s that idea of being a child behind a screen and having that feeling like you can say anything. That child is who I imagine behind a comment every time I see one. They would never say that to my face. They probably wouldn’t even say hello.”

While Rihanna didn’t identify him by name (but rather a Google search that she lightheartedly encouraged Paulson to do), Rih’s lovedom with Saudi billionaire Hasaan Jameel has taken rather public turns since they were first spotted together in 2017. But as for whether she’s actually in love, Rih simply replied, “Of course I am.” Her answer wasn’t so certain on whether she’ll get married though, as she’s leaving that up to the man upstairs. “Only God knows that, girl,” she answered Paulson. “We plan and God laughs, right?”

Rihanna would want to be a mom “more than anything in life,” hence why she’s so in love with her adorable baby cousin who stars on her Instagram page occasioinally, Majesty.

The first thing Rih does when she wakes up is pray, she said. When she was only 7-years-old, she began praying and fasting, which she did on her own in hopes for a trip to New York. Though she’s never questioned her faith, Rih did admit that while recording and working up her Anti opus, she felt she may have let God down. “Not my faith, but I have been in a place where I felt like maybe I had disappointed god so much that we weren’t as close,” she revealed.
“Actually, that happened to me while I was making Anti. That was a really hard time, but, thank God, I got through it.”

Rihanna realized that her faith wasn’t lost, but the enemy may have been trying to sabotage it:

“The devil just has a way of making you feel like you’re not good enough, and that you’re not worthy of god being close to you. It’s really not the truth, but you wind up feeling like that. My grandmother was the one who started me on this. She gave me a devotion book, a physical one. It was the last thing she gave me before she passed away. It got left on a plane and stolen, so I just said, “You know what? Somebody else is going to gain from that.” And then I bought the same book on my iPhone. The only sad part was that her handwriting was in it, but someone is going to be blessed with it, so it’s fine.”

Read the full Interview feature and see the photo shoot slay for RiRi’s 2019 books here.