The single that ended the waiting
Rihanna released “Work,” featuring Drake, on January 27, 2016, as the lead single from Anti. It premiered on major radio stations and Tidal before expanding across digital services; CBS reported the release that morning, and Apple Music retains January 27 as the track date.
The song itself was not a leak. Confusion arises because Anti appeared on Tidal later that day and was briefly made accessible prematurely before its formal rollout. Contemporary reporting described an album leak, but “Work” had already been deliberately released and promoted as a single. The distinction is important: an unauthorized copy of the album does not retroactively make its announced lead track unofficial.
“Work” also reset an album campaign that had accumulated false starts. Rihanna had released “FourFiveSeconds,” “Bitch Better Have My Money” and “American Oxygen” in 2015, but none appeared on the standard edition of Anti. Time’s release-day report noted that Rihanna herself called “Work” the album’s first single. Anti followed within hours, ending the longest gap between her studio albums to that point.
A collective composition shaped for Rihanna
The marquee credits identify Rihanna and Drake, but the record began within a broader Toronto-centered writing and production network. Its credited writers are Robyn Fenty, Aubrey Graham, Jahron Brathwaite—PARTYNEXTDOOR—Matthew Samuels, Allen Ritter, Rupert Thomas and Monte Moir. Moir’s credit reflects an interpolation connected to Alexander O’Neal’s 1985 recording “If You Were Here Tonight.”
Boi-1da, born Matthew Samuels, led the production. Sevn Thomas and Allen Ritter contributed to the track’s construction, while Kuk Harrell and Noah “40” Shebib handled key vocal-production, recording or mixing work. PARTYNEXTDOOR supplied writing and additional vocals. A contemporary Complex breakdown identified the credited contributors, and a later Warner Records biography explicitly describes PARTYNEXTDOOR as the writer of the 2016 smash.
That does not mean Rihanna simply photocopied a demo. Pop authorship includes selection, revision, vocal interpretation and arrangement as well as originating words or chords. Her performance determines the record’s cultural location: she changes texture from clipped insistence to elastic melody, treating consonants and vowels as rhythmic material. Drake’s later verse is smoother and more conventionally conversational, creating contrast rather than displacing her center.
Language was part of the composition
Some early listeners and commentators described Rihanna’s delivery as unintelligible or “gibberish.” That reaction confused unfamiliarity with meaning. “Work” draws on Caribbean speech, including features associated with Rihanna’s native Barbados and Jamaican patois, alongside standard English. It does not operate as a classroom demonstration of one fixed language variety; it is a pop performance built from code-switching, accent and compression.
A scholarly analysis published by Cambridge University Press treated the song as a complex example of how Rihanna uses accent and grammar to construct a multivocal public persona. The study describes the performance in relation to Barbadian identity rather than mere slurred diction. Dazed’s contemporary response likewise challenged the assumption that Caribbean English becomes nonsense when a global pop audience cannot immediately parse it.
Musically, that language is inseparable from the groove. Boi-1da’s sparse production leaves open space around the vocal, using a loping dancehall-derived pulse, soft keyboard figures and restrained bass. Repetition becomes emotional pressure. The narrator is not joyfully celebrating employment; she is demanding effort, attention and reciprocity from a partner who has taken her labor for granted.
The song’s apparent casualness is therefore deceptive. Its hook works simultaneously as language, percussion and argument. Rihanna’s looseness communicates exhaustion and sensuality, while the underlying structure remains exact.
Two official videos, not competing uploads
On February 22, Rihanna released an official visual containing two complete treatments placed back-to-back. Director X made the first, set at The Real Jerk restaurant in Toronto. The crowded party, dancehall styling and communal dancing place the record in a social environment rather than a generic soundstage. Tim Erem directed the second, which isolates Rihanna and Drake in a pink-lit room.
The Fader’s interview with Erem confirms the split directorial structure, while Director X discussed the first section’s location and dance vocabulary. Rihanna’s official upload credits both directors, cinematographers Daniel Bouquet and Alexi Zabes, and production companies Hound Content, Creative Soul and Diktator.
The pairing changes the song’s implications. Director X frames attraction as public performance inside a Caribbean diasporic space; Erem turns it into a private star encounter. Drake appears in both, but Rihanna controls the image through movement, gaze and repetition. Any isolated repost of one half should not be mistaken for a separate official single unless it comes from the rights holder.
Nine weeks at No. 1
“Work” debuted at No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 and climbed to No. 1 in its fourth chart week. It became Rihanna’s fourteenth US No. 1 and remained at the summit for nine consecutive weeks. That run exceeded the peak of the pair’s earlier collaborations “What’s My Name?” and “Take Care,” and made “Work” one of the defining American singles of 2016.
In the United Kingdom it reached No. 2, according to the Official Charts Company’s historical listing. Its success helped demonstrate that a globally dominant pop record did not have to smooth away Rihanna’s Caribbean inflection. Boi-1da later described dancehall as the first music he loved and “Work” as part of bringing that culture to an enormous audience in a Time interview about his production career.
It would be overstated to credit one song with dancehall’s mid-2010s visibility; Jamaican artists and Caribbean diasporic scenes had been sustaining and transforming the music for decades. But “Work” made Rihanna’s heritage—not a neutralized approximation of it—the engine of a massive US hit.
That is why the record endures beyond its statistics. “Work” unlocked Anti, reasserted Rihanna’s interpretive authority and turned a tense demand for reciprocity into communal movement. What sounded minimal on first contact proved densely connected: to Barbados, Jamaica, Toronto, Minneapolis songwriting history and a collaboration network hidden behind two famous names.