DJ Snake decided against giving a track to Rihanna because he wanted to keep it for his own album.
In an interview with Apple Music's Beats 1 radio, the French producer told Zane Lowe the Work singer wanted the beat for his No Option track, featuring Nigerian Afrobeats artist Burna Boy. But after months of deliberating, he decided to keep the record for his newly released album, Carte Blanche.
"She wanted this record for a year and we ended up using it," he confessed to Lowe. "You know because I fell in love with this record and I don't know... I don't want to say like the wrong things so all the Rihanna fans is going to kill me, but you know I just felt like there was no options (sic). Like I had to put this record on my album."
The singer's fans have been impatiently waiting for her next release ever since 2016's Anti, and back in January, her producer The Dream claimed it's "about done."
The rumour mill was further stoked when earlier this week Pop Crave reported a "big female pop star" has allegedly been booked onto all the biggest U.S. late-night talk shows for an "unprecedented TV takeover" on Thursday 8 August, with Rihanna and Adele touted as the likely candidates.
Meanwhile, Snake, real name William Sami Etienne Grigahcine, has collaborated with artists including Offset, 21 Savage, Selena Gomez and Bryson Tiller for his album, but he revealed he turned down the opportunity to work with other big-name artists because it didn't "make sense" for the project.
"This is legacy man. I just gotta follow my heart. That's it," he told Lowe. "And I could have had bigger names on the album, like way bigger names. But you know the records were not right... I'm not chasing the biggest name drops, billing, and stuff.
"We got monsters on the album. It's all about everything had to make sense and it's all about the balance and it needs to be authentic and organic. I want to be proud of this album in 20 years."
