And because I’m there so much, people know I’m a songwriter-producer everybody always has someone that wants to audition. one of her best friends who she grew up with there had a daughter who was in a girl group with Rihanna. My wife is much more connected with Barbados, so we go there all the time. It was 20-something years before this all happened with Rihanna. “Pon de Replay” and Rihanna entered at just the right time.Įvan Rogers, songwriter-producer and co-founder of Syndicated Rhythm Productions: Carl and I went to Barbados and we both met women that we ended up marrying a year later. Jamaican artists like Elephant Man, Sean Paul, and Beenie Man dominated airwaves, clubs, and even the Billboard Hot 100 with singles that urged people to shake off their troubles on the dance floor. And in the early aughts, the genre found yet another audience with the millennial masses. contract signings, Def Jam’s leap of faith, and a beach vacation that led to stumbling on this generation’s most prolific pop star.Ī Girl Called Robyn: ‘Listen, You’ve Got Something Special’ĭancehall, reggae’s rugged younger sibling, rushed back and forth in waves since it’s birth in the ’70s. Rihanna also hasn’t forgotten, celebrating the May 24 anniversary of her debut single on Instagram.īelow, four of the song’s main players - including its songwriter and producer, the music video’s director, and the person who discovered Rihanna - share memories about 3 a.m. Listen closely to Rihanna’s discography, and her Caribbean background has never faltered: from 2009’s flirtatious “Rude Boy” and 2010’s haunting “Man Down” to 2012’s Unapologetic deep cut “No Love Allowed” and the sweltering “Work” team-up with Drake on 2016’s ANTI. Sure, the artist has a Fenty-monogrammed suitcase stuffed with career-defining blockbusters like “What’s My Name,” “We Found Love,” “Diamonds,” and “Umbrella,” and in the shadow of its successors and her image overhaul, “Pon de Replay” reads timid. Fifteen years later, while now a distant 2000s relic, “Pon de Replay” deserves recognition as the anchor of her entire career. Thanks to support from Jay-Z and Def Jam, Rihanna’s fame will likely last longer than Bega’s, but it shouldn’t.” On the opposite end, the New York Times commended Rihanna for being “the latest singer to discover how versatile spring-loaded electronic rhythms can be.”
Rolling Stone compared Rihanna to a “young Mariah Carey minus the birdcalls, and the generic vocal hiccups and frills clearly learned from American R&B often overwhelm her Caribbean charm.” Entertainment Weekly said, “The Barbadian belle’s ‘Pon de Replay’ rode a beat reminiscent of Lou Bega’s ‘Mambo No. While it was a familiar sound to dancehall fans throughout the Caribbean and the New York tristate area, most critics at the time didn’t know what to make of it. Before you can grab a drink, it shifts into fifth gear as Rihanna coos in her lilting Bajan accent: “Come Mr. It starts off boastful, with a handclap-heavy drum line that quickly ushers the body to the middle of the club. But in 2005, she was just a tenacious, unknown 17-year-old named Robyn Rihanna Fenty from the left side of a Caribbean destination island who demanded the attention of the international music scene with a simple request: “Turn the music UP!” “Pon de Replay,” the first single from Rihanna’s debut album, Music of the Sun, was a product of its musical environment that meshed together bubbling dancehall rhythms with a pop approach. It’s hard to picture Rihanna in 2020 without her multiple crowns: wealthiest female musician, one of the world’s best-selling artists, a multi-hyphenate businesswoman, the first woman of color to lead a luxury fashion house under LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton. Photo-Illustration: Maya Robinson/Vulture and Photo by Youtube