Every artistic practice unfolds as a sequence of choices, influences, and refinements that build toward each new work a creator puts into the world, and the recording of Needed Me exists as the latest entry in a chronological arc that ties Rihanna’s creative output to the cultural and creative soil of Kenya, where this work is rooted. Unlike works that fit neatly into preexisting, widely recognized genre categories, this sound defies the narrow boxes that often categorize creative output, landing outside the standard frameworks that define most popular musical works to exist in a space that centers its own unique identity rather than adhering to industry expectations of what a recording should sound like or how it should be labeled.