For those who played/finished RE9, how does it connect to the previous games?

Hello everyone! so recently I finally decided to start the mainline RE franchise and so far I've played up until 4, and I've been debating if I should start RE5 next or wait and hope for a remake because apparently I heard it's not that great unless you play it co-op.
And especially now with the release of RE9 and all the hype I been seeing online, it made me wanna hold off RE5 even more and just play RE9 instead.

So to tie up my question, am I good to start RE9 right now? or does the game have connections to the games I haven't played yet (5-8) and require information that I'm missing? like from example RE6 because I know Leon is in that game too, thanks!