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While the rest of us continue to wait for R9, Shaggy admitted in a recent interview to passing up a chance to collaborate with Rihanna on her upcoming album, saying no on the grounds that he "didn't need to audition," according to The Daily Star.
While the Bajan superstar has yet to announce details about the long-awaited follow-up to 2016's Anti, there have been several reports that the album will be heavily influenced by reggae and dancehall.
Shaggy told the outlet he was approached to be part of the project but ultimately decided not to take them up on the offer. "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," he said, most likely referring to the process of writing, producing and even recording music that may not end up being a part of the final project, as opposed to a literal audition. For context, it's fairly common for songwriters and artists to send demos and even record songs that end up getting axed from the final tracklist. Considering a producer on the album claimed the singer had 500 potential songs to parse through, the process can be a crapshoot.
As it stands, Rihanna hasn't given us much more information about the album besides insinuating that it's completed and joking about her refusal to release it.
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