Everyone is gearing up to watch Rihanna hit the stage on Sunday during the Super Bowl halftime performance as it’ll mark her return to the live music stage for the first time in nearly seven years! To build anticipation for the event, the global superstar sat down for a press conference earlier today ahead of the big show where she opened up about her upcoming performance, being a mom and more.

“It feels like [playing the Super Bowl] could have only been now,” she explained. “When I first got the call to do it again this year I was like, ‘Are you sure? I’m three months postpartum. Should I be making major decisions like this right now? I might regret this,’” she continued.

She then touched on the joys of being a mom, explaining, that her son was a big motivator for her to do the halftime performance. “When you become a mom there’s something that happens where you feel like you can take on the world and can do anything. The Super Bowl is one of the biggest stages in the world. As scary as it was, because I haven’t been on stage in seven years, there’s something exhilarating about the challenge of it all. It’s important for me to do this year. It’s important for my son to see that.”

The Bajan beauty also said that one of the biggest challenges in creating the show was figuring out her setlist. She explained that the show will run about 13 minutes but fitting all eight albums into that amount of time is difficult. “Some songs we have to lose because of that, and that’s going to be okay,” she continued. “We did a pretty good job at narrowing it down. There’s probably been about 39 versions of the setlist right now. We’re on our 39th. Every little change counts.”

She then added that her Caribbean heritage will be a major part of the performance, adding, “That’s a big part of why it’s important for me to do this show. Representing for my country, Barbados. Representing for Black women everywhere. That’s really important.”

Check out the full press conference below.

Despite the above positivity, the cloud of controversy looms large over Rihanna’s performance after Colin Kaepernick’s supporters called her out for reversing her stance on performing at the Super Bowl.

In 2020, the Fenty Beauty founder turned down the opportunity to perform the Halftime Show because she wasn’t happy with the way the league treated Kaepernick following his suspension in 2016 for kneeling during the national anthem.

“I couldn’t dare do that,” she told Vogue in 2019. “For what? Who gains from that? Not my people. I just couldn’t be a sellout. I couldn’t be an enabler. There’s things within that organization that I do not agree with at all, and I was not about to go and be of service to them in any way.”

With Rihanna’s meteoric rise from music to entrepreneurship over the years, many fans felt as though she would be against the NFL’s blatant disrespect of Black players and ownership within the league. A few fans wondered if the star’s change of heart had anything to do with money.

Rihanna’s halftime show appearance will be the first time fans will get to see her perform since her critically acclaimed Anti World Tour in 2016. There is speculation the singer will use the platform to tease new music or her next album.

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