Rihanna Says Chris Brown Collaborations Were All Business

Posted by Andrew Unterberger on 03/15/2012 at 12:01 PM News

The Popdust Files: birthday cake, chris brown, collborations, rihanna, turn up the music

The internet postulating was rampant when it was announced that Rihanna and Chris Brown were going to record a pair of collaborations. Were they just trying to create controversy for maximum headlines? Was this Rihanna’s way of publicly forgiving Chris Brown for his previous sins against her? Or, as many of us feared, was this the pair testing the waters with their respective fans before publicly announcing that they were getting back together as a couple? Whatever the intended message, it seemed like the two stars were trying to provoke something with their professional partnership.

But what if the motivation behind the collaborations was as simple as two incredibly successful, popular artists wanting to help the success of their own singles by adding the other’s talents and star power to them? That’s what Rihanna told Ryan Seacrest in a radio interview earlier today. Ri explains:

The first song that came about was ‘Birthday Cake.’ I mean we ended up recording them at the same time and executing them together, but I reached out to him about doing ‘Birthday Cake’ because that’s the only person that really–it made sense to do the record…Just as a musician despite everything else that was going to be the person. You know I thought about rappers, and I’ve done that so many times, and the hottest R&B artist out right now is Chris Brown. So I wanted him on the track, and then in turn he was like ‘Why don’t you do the remix to my track?’ and it was a trade off.

Well, it’s a fair point—if you asked most pop artists what R&B artist they could have on their upcoming single, a fair number of them probably would choose Breezy, very arguably the “hottest R&B artist out right now,” as Rihanna claims. Do we believe her that professional interest is all there was to the collaborations? Well…ask us again in six months if the Twitter flirting hasn’t picked back up.

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