Listen: Rihanna's "Lift Me Up"

Pop star-turned-fashion mogul Rihanna has officially made a return to music with Lift Me Up, the lead single off the soundtrack for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. It's also RiRi's first solo song in almost seven years after her most recent album ANTI and the second time she has lent her vocals to a film soundtrack after Sledgehammer, which featured in Star Trek Beyond. (She has had a handful of other singles since then, including Wild Thoughts with DJ Khaled, Loyalty with Kendrick Lamar, Lemon with N.E.R.D. and, most recently, Believe It with PartyNextDoor in March 2020.) In comparison to those ebullient cuts, Lift Me Up is a more muted production far removed from Afrofuturist bops like Redemption. It's a soulful, if a tad generic, ballad backed by piano and gentle strings that lets Rihanna's voice do all the talking... err the singing. Now where is that reggae album Rihanna has been teasing for four years!