"American Oxygen" is a song recorded by Barbadian singer Rihanna. It was written by Alex da Kid, Candice Pillay, Sam Harris and Rihanna; Alex da Kid and Kanye West produced it. Written over the course of a year, "American Oxygen" was inspired by the 1984 single "Born in the U.S.A." performed by Bruce Springsteen. It was made available for streaming on Tidal on April 5, 2015, and released for digital download on April 14 via the iTunes Store. The song has patriotic lyrical content about a new America and the chasing of the American dream.

Darren Craig, Jonathan Craven and Jeff Nicholas of the Uprising Creative directed the music video for "American Oxygen", which premiered exclusively on Tidal on April 6. It depicts numerous moments from American history while Rihanna sings in front of a large American flag. Rihanna performed "American Oxygen" for the first time at the Final Four of the 2015 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament in Indianapolis.

She [Rihanna] just really made magic with that song and she made it her own. And the fact that her and Alex both helped craft the song and turned it into something that's bigger than me, it just means way more. The perspective that they gave to it, having it be this immigrant story, is something so cool and unique that I probably wouldn't have thought of had it not been for them.

"American Oxygen" was written by Alex da Kid, Sam Harris, Candice Pillay and Rihanna. The production was done by Alex da Kid and the American rapper Kanye West. The writing of the song began in 2014, and it continued over a course of one year. Originally, Alex da Kid sent the beats of the song to Harris who started writing some lyrics. In an interview with Billboard, Harris noted how "American Oxygen" really stuck with him and he started the chorus with a couple lines he wrote: "We worked on just that chorus for like three or four months, going back and forth, back and forth.... It goes to show you that sometimes these songs just appear out of nowhere and sometimes you just have to go at it like a block of marble and you're chipping away at it." Harris explained how he and Alex da Kid wanted the chorus of the song to say a lot, even with a very small amount of lyrics in it. When they got the final chorus, the producer started to look for potential performers of the song.

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