Shaggy Says He Declined Collaborating With Rihanna For "R9"

We’re still waiting on the arrival of Rihanna‘s R9, an album that seems to be put on hold indefinitely at this point. While RihRih’s been building the Fenty empire in the past few years, we’ve yet to hear much music from her. We do, however, know a few things about the project including the direction she’s taken with the album. She’s tapping into a more dancehall/reggae sound for this album and enlisting some heavy hitters in the scene to help bring it to life.

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One of the people that was reportedly reached out to was Shaggy. In a recent interview, the international reggae star revealed that Rihanna’s peeps had reached out to him for a collab on R9 but he ended up declining. His reason? He didn’t feel the need to audition for it.

“They approached me for the Rihanna project, yeah. There’s a lot of great people involved, but for me, I didn’t need to audition to be on the record. I’ll leave that to younger guys,” he said. “But from what I hear, it should be good.”

She previously shared details in a cover with Vogue, explaining that the direction of reggae just feels right. “It’s in my blood. It doesn’t matter how far or long removed I am from that culture, or my environment that I grew up in; it never leaves. It’s always the same high. Even though I’ve explored other genres of music, it was time to go back to something that I haven’t really homed in on completely for a body of work,” she said.