How Eminem and Kanye West missed out on the beat to Rihanna’s ‘Diamonds’
Rihanna’s 2012 single ‘Diamonds’ was a massive hit for the Barbadian pop star, but the track could have easily travelled down several other paths.
Before it was sent over to Rihanna, not one, but two massive rappers were in consideration to use it. Produced by the duo Stargate, who had previously created music for Rihanna, and by Benny Blanco, whose biggest production credits by this time had been for songs for Britney Spears, Katy Perry, Keisha and Maroon 5. Blanco had played a part in some massive pop hits, so he was ostensibly a good fit for an artist like Rihanna, but when he was brought on board, he imagined the beat going elsewhere.
As he revealed during an interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, Blanco had originally envisioned the ‘Diamonds’ beat becoming “a Kanye song or a Lana Del Rey song”, but he was eventually talked out of it by his collaborators Stargate.
The production duo apparently told him, “Yo, we’re giving this song to Rihanna,” but Blanco himself was unsure if that was a good idea. He initially maintained that it felt more like a Ye song.
But it wasn’ just Ye who was in the running to take ‘Diamonds’, with Blanco claiming that the beat also found its way to Eminem’s camp before Rihanna ever got a hold of it. Blanco wasn’t aware of this until after the fact, but the process actually developed quite far with Eminem, to the point that he even laid down vocals over it.
Perhaps there is a version of Eminem rapping over the ‘Diamonds’ instrumental sitting in a hard drive out there somewhere, but, for the time being at least, it remains lost to obscurity. In the end, Eminem’s claims on the song collapsed, and Blanco was convinced that Rihanna should get it.
Blanco said that he came to realise that Stargate, who had already produced several of Rihanna’s greatest ever hits, not to mention popular singles for the likes of Beyoncé and Ne-Yo, knew better than he did on the matter. It was, as history now shows, the right decision to follow their instincts.
“She cut the song,” he recalled of Rihanna’s eventual involvement, “First of all, the second she cut the song, they were completely right. I was like, ‘This is the best song I’ve ever done’”.
‘Diamonds’ was a number-one hit in countries all over the world, becoming a defining song of the early 2010s. Not only that, but Blanco’s desire to see Kanye West jump onto the beat also came true anyway, as he featured on the official remix that followed a couple of months after the main release.