Umbrella (music video)

Umbrella is a song by Barbadian recording artist Rihanna from her third studio album Good Girl Gone Bad 2007. It features American rapper JayZ, who cowrote the song with its producers Tricky Stewart and Kuk Harrell, with additional writing from TheDream. The song was originally written with recording artist Britney Spears in mind, but her label rejected it. Umbrella is a hip hop and RampB song referring to a romantic and platonic relationship and the strength of that relationship.

American songwriter and producer Christopher Tricky Stewart convened with Terius TheDream Nash and Kuk Harrell in January 2007 at the Atlantabased Triangle Studios to create new material. In the studio, Stewart was messing around with a walloping hihat sound, which he found in the free music software GarageBand, which is included in all Mac computers. With his attention caught by the sound, Nash asked Stewart what he was doing Oh, my Gosh, what is that beat?. When Stewart incorporated chords onto the hihat, immediately the word popped into Nashs head he went to the vocal booth and started singing. Nash wrote the first two verses and the chorus over Stewarts skeleton track. They quickly wrote the lyrics, completing the first verse in 60 seconds. They continued into writing, adding the hook while Stewart would put the next chord. In a matter of hours, they had recorded a demo of the track. The song was written with American pop singer Britney Spears in mind, whom Stewart had previously worked with on her 2003 single Me Against the Music. Stewart and Nash thought that Spears, who had her personal life... a little out of control at the time, needed a hit as musical comeback. Spears was working on her fifth album, Blackout, so they sent a copy of the demo to Spears management. However, Spears did not hear of the song because her label rejected it, claiming they had enough songs for her to record.Following the managements rejection of the track, Stewart and Nash dealt it out to other record labels. It was also given to English singersongwriter Taio Cruz, who failed to convince his record company to release it. It was then opted by Island Def Jam chairman Antonio L.A. Reid, a friend of Stewart who established his first studio. By early February 2007, the demo was sent to Reids righthand woman, AampR executive Karen Kwak, who passed it along to Reid with a message confirming that they had found a song suited for Rihanna, who was working on her third studi

Source: Wikipedia