RiRi season is upon us.
Rihanna dropped a new song, "Lift Me Up," on Friday, the pop superstar's first single as a lead artist since 2016. A lush ballad long on fluttering string instruments — and with a movingly tender vocal performance — "Lift Me Up" is from the soundtrack to the highly anticipated new Marvel movie "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" and arrives months before Rihanna is due to play the halftime show at Super Bowl LVII in February.
The song was co-written by Rihanna with the Nigerian singer Tems (she of the sinuous "Essence" and the woozy "Wait For U"), "Wakanda Forever" director Ryan Coogler and composer Ludwig Göransson, who also produced the track. In a statement the artists described "Lift Me Up" as "a tribute to the extraordinary life and legacy" of actor Chadwick Boseman, who played the title role in 2018's "Black Panther" before dying of colon cancer in 2020 at age 43.
