Shontelle Talks Rihanna, Asher Roth Collaborations

Fresh on the heels of releasing her sophomore album No Gravity, Shontelle is back on her grind as a songwriter. The Barbadian singer recently linked up with her childhood friend Rihanna to pen the track “Man Down” for Ri’s fifth album Loud, explaining how the collaboration came to be.

“When I was writing my part, we were in the studio together,” Shontelle told staging-rapup.kinsta.cloud. “She really works hard. We were at one of her concerts and she literally got straight off the stage, walked right onto the studio bus, and went straight to work.”

The “Impossible” songstress revealed that “Man Down,” which she describes as “very dramatic,” was easy to write based on the duo’s comfort level that came with growing up together. “It was good because it was like, ‘I know you, I know what you need, I know what you want.'”

Rihanna previously stated in an interview with BBC Radio 1Xtra’s Max that the track sports a Caribbean flavor. “There is a song called ‘Man Down’ that is a straight-up Jamaican record, and I love it,” giggled RiRi. “I even do a little chant on it at the end!”

Aside from working on material for other artists, Shontelle is currently back in the lab writing music for film scores and hinted that the third single off No Gravity has a high likelihood of being “DJ Made Me Do It” featuring her labelmate Asher Roth.

“Asher’s always fun. I just knew he was going to kill it. And what’s even more exciting about that song is that it was written by Bruno Mars and the Jackie Boyz, so we were in the studio together, all of us just rocking out and partying,” she shared. “A lot of stations have already started playing it, so there’s a strong possibility that ‘DJ Made Me Do It’ might be the third single.”

–Steven J. Horowitz