Three weeks after Rihanna dropped her much-debated "Birthday Cake" remix featuring Chris Brown, the singer is finally commenting on why she decided to work with her ex-boyfriend. Rihanna and Brown also collaborated on a remix of his "Turn Up the Music," which was released on the same day last month.
"The first song that came about was 'Birthday Cake' ... we ended up recording [the two songs] at the same time and executing them together," she explained on Ryan Seacrest's radio show Thursday morning (March 15). "But I reached out to [Brown] 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," she said referring to Brown's 2009 assault on her, which ended their relationship. "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."
The ex-couple have also had fans buzzing in the last few months over rumors that they have been dating again, despite Brown's romantic relationship with aspiring model Karrueche Tran.
"We did two records — one for my fans, one for his fans — and that way our fans can come together," Rihanna explained. "There shouldn't be a divide, you know? It's music and it's innocent."
The interview is the first time she has commented publicly about the controversial remixes. However, "Birthday Cake" co-producer/writer The-Dream recently stopped by MTV News' "RapFix Live" and opened up about the track.
"The same questions that went through my mind, and I'm an artist also, had to have gone through hers," The-Dream recalled of hearing Rihanna's remix idea. "When she raised the question to me, I know she's not crazy. So my thought was, 'You've been thinking about this, you've already thought it out, so evidently you know what reaction you gonna get.'
Dream added of Rihanna and Chris' troubled history, "Everybody knows what took place, cool. Have the power to really forgive if that's what it is. If not, stay on that side of the fence from the beginning."
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