“Birthday Cake” Collaboration Was All Rihanna’s Idea, Says The-Dream

Becky Bain | February 22, 2012 3:25 pm

The world is still scratching their heads wondering what was going through Rihanna and Chris Brown’s heads when the former couple teamed up for a remix of RiRi’s “Birthday Cake” (as well as Brown’s remix for “Turn The Music Up”). The song’s producer, The-Dream, sheds some light on the recording of the controversial track, revealing to Billboard that the collaboration was all Rihanna’s idea.

“For me, it’s just music — two talented people doing a record together, doing two records together, and that’s what it was,” The-Dream tells Billboard. “It wasn’t about an incident that happened. The true thing really is to forgive, and… you want to believe in people.”

“It was Rih’s idea,” he says, noting that the remix was completed barely a week ago. “Not only do we work together, but [Rihanna] is a friend of mine. And it’s like, ‘You wanna do something? Then cool, let’s do it.’ I don’t know how she got the logistics and how it happened — maybe she’ll talk about it one day. I showed up at the studio, and it was like, ‘All right, cool, let’s finish this record,’ which we probably should have finished the first time we did it.”

The R&B singer-producer thinks the real issue at hand is about forgiveness. “I think [the topic] that should be more on the tongues is: how do we proclaim to be a nation of forgiving, and we go by all of these rules and everything, but we can’t actually do it? It actually makes you look weaker than your adversary — if you don’t have the power to forgive, but you lie and say that you did.”

Dream continues: “Because this is about [Rihanna]. If she can forgive, that’s where she is mentally. As a friend, it’s like, ‘Okay, cool. Let’s roll.'”

Well, Dream, please allow us to retort.

One can be a forgiving person, but does not need to instantly forgive someone who does not earn such forgiveness. Obviously, Rihanna believes Brown has done enough to warrant another chance. Many others believe Brown is as immature and aggressive as he was three years ago, and choose not to forgive him or support his career.

And no, this is not all about Rihanna. By collaborating professionally with Brown, she is involving us in the conversation. It would be one thing if the two had reconciled and began hanging out privately — that’s none of our business (though it personally concern us why she chose to do so). But both Rihanna and Brown are inviting us into the conversation by imploring us to support a song that features a victim of assault and her attacker singing about how badly they want to bang each other.

And as to your comment that you and RiRi finally finished the record “which we probably should have finished the first time we did it” — yeah, ya think? Who puts half a song on an album?