The Rihanna song secretly produced by Travis Scott: “This is a real mini-movie”
Since becoming romantically involved with A$AP Rocky, Rihanna has been quiet on the musical front. Her last album, 2016’s Anti, was a chart-topping multi-platinum project with a Diamond-certified lead single. Since then, she has released very little.
However, in the lead-up to the album’s release, Rihanna released some stray singles that didn’t appear on the body of work, one of which was produced by Travis Scott. Before officially announcing that she was in a relationship with A$AP Rocky, there were rumours that the Bajan singer was dating Scott, but that wasn’t the case, and they were merely working together.
Rihanna has always been linked to hip-hop and has worked with numerous rap artists, including Eminem, Kanye West and, of course, Jay-Z. That said, the vocalist usually sings on tracks, and until 2015, she had never tried rapping.
Still, for ‘Bitch Better Have My Money’, Rihanna began emceeing and recruited Travis Scott as well as Badriia Bourelly, Bibi Bourelly, Jamille Pierre, and Kanye West for help. However, many of the track’s producers have suggested that Scott’s contribution was negligible.
The song was accompanied by a music video that became somewhat controversial. In a 2015 interview with The Fader magazine, beatmaker ‘Deputy’ spoke about the track’s creation, stating, “I owe Kanye nothing but gratitude — he played an instrumental part in getting the record to Rihanna. Wondagurl’s contribution I didn’t know about, but Travis came in and added the part in the second verse where the beat changes.”
However, he did insist that the additional production provided by others was minimal, adding, “The record is 90-95% me — it’s no shade on nobody, but at the end of the day, the record is produced by Deputy. I been in this game for a minute, so I understand how the game is, and it’s cool.”
The song’s music video received a lot of negative press following the release of its music video, which depicted Rihanna torturing a nude woman by tying her up and hanging her upside down from the ceiling.
Initially, critics labelled the Bajan as a simple shock jock. However, she asserted that there was a deeper meaning behind the visuals and, in an interview with Gigwise, unveiled, “I wanted people to feel like they’d got more than they’d expected. But not in a shocking way – in the sense of, ‘Wow, this is a real mini-movie’. You know? I wanted to go deeper. Mostly, what I wanted was for people to get it.”
She also discussed the portrayal of women in the music video, elaborating, “Those are the people that didn’t get it. I’m not worried about those people,” she said. “This was not a woman empowerment video. I was making a piece of art.”
Although Deputy asserted that Travis Scott didn’t produce ‘Bitch Better Have My Money’, the Houston native is still credited alongside him and Kanye West.