Rihanna & Chris Brown’s Collaborations Hit Radio

Becky Bain | February 27, 2012 10:47 am

The swarm of controversy surrounding Rihanna and Chris Brown’s musical collaborations may have lost them some fans (more Rihanna than Brown, we imagine), but it certainly hasn’t dampened the singers’ presence on the radio. Programmers across the county are happily spinning both the remix to Rihanna’s “Birthday Cake” and Brown’s “Turn Up The Music”, which were leaked online by the duo last week.

Billboard inquired with several R&B radio programmers about why they chose to support the songs, and their reasons are pretty much summed up by this quote given by Hollywood Hernandez, program director of Cumulus’ syndicated R&B channel “The Touch”: “My philosophy is to play the hits… If it’s a hit song, I’ll play it.” Personal morality be damned!

Brown’s Rihanna-featuring remix for his single, “Turn Up The Music”, will be digitally released sometime this week. However, the fate of Rihanna’s “Cake”, featuring Brown, is still up in the air — a label rep told Billboard that Island Def Jam is still working on her album’s title track as the LP’s next single and has not decided what to do (if anything) with the “Cake” remix.

Though we aren’t surprised that Breezy and his team are actively pushing the most obvious symbol of Rihanna’s forgiveness, we don’t see how RiRi could benefit whatsoever from officially releasing a song with the man who once attacked her. Let’s hope Jay-Z blows the candles out on “Cake” once and for all.

[Via Billboard]