The Dream Dishes On Rihanna & Chris Collaboration: ‘It Was Ri’s Idea,This Is About Her’

Earlier this week, Rihanna released the ‘Birthday Cake ’remix featuring her ex-boo Chris Brown which had a lot of fans jammin’ and others outraged and left mind boggled. Being that the Dream wrote one of Rihanna’s biggest hits ‘Umbrella’ (in which he made a staggering $15 million off of in royalties), it’s no surprise that he was responsible for penning ‘Cake’ as well.

Sway of MTV’s Rap Fix, chopped it up with The Dream this week as he promoted his upcoming project and he dished on how the actual record (which started as an interlude) came about as well as Rihanna’s decision to put Chris on the track. He also posing the question to critics: ‘How do we proclaim to be a nation of forgiving, and we go by all of these rules and everything, but we can’t actually do it’

Peep the excerpts:

The Dream on if he knew Chris would be on the Birthday Cake Remix
No, I didn’t know he would always be a feature on this song. Eventually, I would; of course, I would have to know. This song came about and ended up being an interlude on the album because the last time that we had remaining – I think I was in Amsterdam, which we stopped over in Amsterdam for some reason– and I wrote this record. Everybody that knows me knows that I only write up until the first hook because I think you’re wasting your time if nobody likes it up until then. What’s the point in writing the whole song [because] you’re just wasting time. So I write up until the first hook and that’s all that was there and we ran out of time but she loved the song so much that she was like, “I have to record whatever is here and we’ll make it an interlude” with the thought that we think it may be a single but we wasn’t tripping.  Then she put it out and everybody got pissed off (because it was so short). That’s how the song part began and how she got to the Chris Brown part is probably…. all Ri … I remember her mentioning it. At the end of the day, she’s my friend, so whatever she wants to do is whatever she wants to do and we made it happen.

How did Rihanna tell you Chris Brown was going to be on the Birthday Cake Remix?
Very nonchalant.  I was in the car actually in Miami and driving. “What’s up? I think I’m going to put Chris on it,” [says Rihanna]. I don’t know which Chris you’re talkin’ about, [but] OK, cool, whatever you say. Then she didn’t say anything else about it and it happened.

The Dream recently spoke to Billboard as well about the controversial collaboration and explained that to him it’s just music and people are worried about the wrong thing.

For me, it’s just music — two talented people doing a record together, doing two records together, and that’s what it was. It wasn’t about an incident that happened. The true thing really is to forgive, and… you want to believe in people.

It was Rih’s idea, not only do we work together, but [Rihanna] is a friend of mine. And it’s like, ‘You wanna do something? Then cool, let’s do it.’ I don’t know how she got the logistics and how it happened — maybe she’ll talk about it one day. I showed up at the studio, and it was like, ‘All right, cool, let’s finish this record,’ which we probably should have finished the first time we did it.

I think [the topic] that should be more on the tongues is: how do we proclaim to be a nation of forgiving, and we go by all of these rules and everything, but we can’t actually do it? It actually makes you look weaker than your adversary — if you don’t have the power to forgive, but you lie and say that you did. Because this is about her, if she can forgive, that’s where she is mentally. As a friend, it’s like, ‘Okay, cool. Let’s roll.

Meanwhile, the Dream has a full fledged video for his baby making single, ‘The Roc’ off of his new album The Love IV: Diary of a Madman on it’s way.