RIHANNA TALKS MOTHERHOOD, SUPER BOWL: 'IT WAS NOW OR NEVER'

Rihanna knew that if she was going to return to the stage less than a year after giving birth to her first child, the performance would have to top anything she'd done before.

"If I'm going to leave my baby, I'm going to leave my baby for something special, the multi-Grammy winner told in an interview.

That something special turned out to be the upcoming 2023 Super Bowl halftime show. "It was now or never for me," she said.

The singer had previously declined to perform in the 2019 halftime show out of solidarity with Colin Kaepernick. But in a recent interview ahead of her "Savage X Fenty Show Vol. 4, Rihanna said that the timing and circumstances this time around were right for her. "It was a challenge that I welcomed. It was a stage bigger than anything I've ever done," she said.

After the NFL announced in late September that Rihanna would headline the February show, hopeful rumors spread of a long-awaited new album, which she has been teasing in recent years. Her last album, "ANTI," was released in 2016.