Ri is yet to announce her follow-up to 2016’s ‘Anti’, though it has been widely reported that a dancehall and reggae-influenced record is on the way. Despite the global hype surrounding the album informally dubbed ‘R9’ by fans and the artist herself, Shaggy felt it wasn’t the right move for him.
Speaking to The Daily Star, he 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. But from what I hear it should be good.”
His desire to continue working alongside Sting, with whom the ‘It Wasn’t Me’ singer collaborated for an album that was extensively toured last year, apparently remains undimmed however.
“Sting and I are really close,” Shaggy said. “We speak regularly and there’s always things that we’re gonna do, I’m sure there will be something new.”
The last update fans received on the new Rihanna record came in the form of a head-banging puppy – and a joke about her “refusing to release [the album]”.
On December 22, the musician posted a video of a dog bouncing around a cardboard box soundtracked by House Of Pain’s ‘Jump Around’. The post was captioned: “update: me listening to R9 by myself and refusing to release it.”
The post comes a year after Rihanna told a fan in her Instagram comments that the new record would be released in 2019.