Shaggy raised some eyebrows recently when he said that Rihanna asked him to be on her new album, but he turned down the opportunity. Shaggy said, “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.”
Now it looks like we are hearing the other side of the story, and it’s basically the exact opposite of what Shaggy said. Shaggy didn’t really say much, but a Rihanna representative reportedly told the Jamaica Irie FM morning show that what he did say was mostly untrue.
Shaggy implied that he would have had to audition to appear on Rihanna’s new album, but the rep reportedly said, “We are working on an album, not a talent show, so why would she require Shaggy or any other artist to audition?”
Additionally, Shaggy may not have been asked to be on the album at all. In fact, the rep reportedly said that it was Shaggy who requested to be included:
“After Rihanna had already gathered all the material for the album, Shaggy contacted her asking to be a part of the album. She explained to him that the album was pretty much completed and they were just working on mixing, mastering, and deciding which songs to actually use. However, she invited him to submit some materials so she could see if it fits with the flow of the album. That was by no means asking for an audition, it was more going out of her way to get him on the album.”
The representative reportedly went on to say, “We hope Shaggy will come out and let the fans know the real truth because we all know that the media in general and especially entertainment media cannot be trusted. They will twist someone stories in order to get the most viewers.”
See where Rihanna’s upcoming record falls on our list of 2020’s most anticipated albums.
