Shaggy Turned Down Working With Rihanna on Her New Album Because He Didn’t Want to Audition

The Jamaican artist shared details on why he won’t be featured on Rihanna’s next album in his latest interview.

Shaggy reportedly turned down a feature on Rihanna’s new reggae album, R9.

According to a new interview with the UK’s Daily Star the Jamaican artist held nothing back when asked about the dance hall-inspired project. He shared, “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. But from what I hear, it should be good.” 

Despite declining to work on the album he also expressed that he supports what Rihanna is currently working on: “It’s a healthy competition. Dancehall is in a good place but we need as many people to do this art form as possible. When it crosses over and becomes popular with artists from other genres and other cultures, that can only be good.”

In 2019, Shaggy appeared in The Little Mermaid Live! alongside Queen Latifah as Sebastian. He also headlined a tour with Sting and dropped Wah Gwaan?! his latest solo release since Out of Many, One Music in 2013. At the most recent Grammy Awards him and Sting took home an award for Best Reggae Album (44/876 The Remixes).

Rihanna has been teasing R9 for months on end, a number of fans have expressed via social media that they thought the album would arrive before 2019 ended. At the moment there is no exact release date for the album. 

Source: Daily Star