Rihanna says: “The first song that came about was ‘Birthday Cake.’ I mean we ended up recording them at the same time and executing them together, but I reached out to him about doing ‘Birthday Cake’ because that’s the only person that really–it made sense to do the record. Just as a musician despite everything else that was going to be the person. You know I thought about rappers, and I’ve done that so many times, and the hottest R&B artist out right now is Chris Brown. So I wanted him on the track, and then in turn he was like ‘Why don’t you do the remix to my track?’ and it was a trade off. We did two records. One for my fans. One for his fans, and that way our fans can come together. There shouldn’t be a divide. You know? It’s music, and it’s innocent”
