Shaggy turned down the opportunity to be on Rihanna’s upcoming album.
Dancehall veteran and Grammy-award winning dancehall star Shaggy is admitting that he shot down the chance to be on Rihanna‘s highly anticipated reggae album. While the Bajan superstar has enlisted several Jamaican writers and perhaps even collaborators like Koffee and Demarco for the project dubbed “R9” by fans, the offer did not appeal to Mr. Boombastic.
During a recent interview with UK Daily Star, the dancehall legend said he left the opportunity for younger artistes. “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,” Shaggy said. “I’ll leave that to younger guys. But from what I hear it should be good.”
Is this to say that Rihanna’s team actually wanted the legendary Shaggy, the great Mr. Boombastic, the renowned Sebastian from “Little Mermaid Live” to… audition? Say it ain’t so.
The multi-platinum selling musician went on to discuss his take on international acts partaking in dancehall music. “It’s healthy competition. Dancehall is in [a] good place but we need as many people to do this art form as possible,” Shaggy told the UK Daily Star. “When it crosses over and becomes popular with artistes from other genres and other cultures, that can only be good,” he said.
We’re not told at what point exactly Shaggy was “approached for the Rihanna project,” but the album failed to meet its promised release in 2019. Rihanna has been playing hardball all year, dodging questions that would have her commit to any one date, or even month. The highest-earning female musician wreaked distress and utter disappointment among her fans, who were expecting the album to be dropped off before the new decade. Late last year, Rihanna shared a hilarious video to Instagram of a pup rocking out to an old school joint. In the caption, the singer wrote “update: me listening to R9 by myself and refusing to release it,” the singer jested. She is yet to share any further updates or announce a new release date.
Shaggy would have certainly been an excellent addition to Rihanna’s upcoming album, but based on his statement, I can’t be mad at him. Can you?
