Rihanna's "Umbrella"

One Song

The episode explores the cultural and meteorological impact of Rihanna's hit 'Umbrella,' examining its connection to global flooding events

Key takeaways

• The release of 'Umbrella' coincided with extreme rainfall and flooding in the UK, New Zealand, and Romania.
• The song was produced by Red Zone members Tricky, The Dream, and Kukurel in Atlanta.

Main topics

• Meteorological impact of pop hits
• Rihanna's early career and signing

Notable quotes

A record that forged a new global pop star and literally changed the weather.

Conclusion

A deep dive into how a single hit song can define an era through both

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) One Song Nation, today we're bringing back one of our favorite episodes of the show to talk about the song that turned Robin, Rihanna Fenty, into one of Earth's biggest superstars. Today, she has 14 Billboard number ones and massively successful beauty and lingerie lines. But before she was a billionaire, she built her first smash hit on top of a garage band drum loop. So today we're going to break down her hit song, Umbrella. Listen to all of its isolated layers from the drums and synths to Rihanna's gorgeous vocals. You may have heard this song many times before, but never, never quite like this. We're talking one song, and that song is Rihanna's Umbrella. Ella, Ella. Speaker 2 (0:39) Luxury, on this show, we talk about songs that have a huge cultural impact. We do. But this time, we're talking about a record that had a huge meteorological impact. Speaker 1 (0:47) I have no idea where this is going, but I'm intrigued. Please explain. Speaker 2 (0:51) Luxury, what if I told you that in 2007, when today's song reached number one in the UK, it coincided with, or perhaps triggered, dramatic floods. all over Britain. I Speaker 1 (1:01) would say that's definitely not a coincidence, but, you know, please explain further. No, it's true. It's true. Speaker 2 (1:06) The days before the release of this song, clear skies, sunshine. After it hit number one, the UK had some of the most dramatic rainfall ever since recorded records began. Speaker 1 (1:17) Okay, that's super crazy. I Speaker 2 (1:18) kid Speaker 1 (1:18) you Speaker 2 (1:18) not. Speaker 1 (1:19) And that's really sad. I mean, like, the British get a lot of rain. They do. Wait, just to clarify, how do we know that this wasn't a coincidence? You're sure they're connected? Because it wasn't just the UK. The Speaker 2 (1:27) song's rain, you see what I did there? The song's rain at number one in New Zealand also coincided with extreme weather. There was flooding, there was a tornado, and that's not all. Romania also had extreme rainfall and terrible weather, while this song topped the charts there. I say all this to say, this song had everyone reaching. for their umbrella. Speaker 1 (1:46) Nicely tied together there, Diallo. I'm impressed. Well done. Speaker 2 (1:50) That's right. On today's one song, a record that forged a new global pop star and literally changed the weather. It's Rihanna and it's Umbrella, Ella, Ella A. Speaker 2 (2:08) All right, I'm actor, writer, director, and amateur meteorologist, Diallo Riddle. I Speaker 1 (2:12) think after today, you're a professional. I think you just made the jump. Speaker 2 (2:15) If Speaker 1 (2:15) you can say the Speaker 2 (2:15) word, you are that. Speaker 1 (2:17) And I'm producer, DJ, songwriter, and musicologist, Luxury, aka the guy who talks about interpolation on the internet. Speaker 2 (2:23) You didn't have the keyboard today. You know Speaker 1 (2:25) what? I took a cue from your reaction last time. Oh, gosh. Now you miss it. Now I kind of miss it. Okay. Well, next time. Stockholm syndrome. Be careful what you wish for. Speaker 2 (2:35) So, Speaker 1 (2:35) Diallo, I think we can both agree that Umbrella is the song that announces Rihanna as a true global pop star. But it wasn't her first song. It wasn't her first album. No. But tell us a little bit about her earlier years, those first two albums, and maybe even how you first heard about her. Speaker 2 (2:49) Absolutely. I first heard about Rihanna, because this is during the time when I'm DJing twice a week at Boulevard 3 in Los Angeles. Big nightclub, sometimes 1,500 people through the door, super packed. And when you're DJing that kind of room, you got to hit people with the big hits. Thankfully, the aughts kind of threw out the aughts. Everything was sort of like a major hit. You always sort of knew, oh, that's a song that's going to hit at midnight. Everybody's going to hit to the dance floor. And along comes this song, Ponda Replay, which was by an artist that we hadn't heard of. This was around 2005. And that summer, I want to say, was pretty much the unexpected hit of the summer. Speaker 1 (3:31) Nice. Speaker 2 (3:32) It definitely ruled the charts, but also the club charts. Speaker 1 (3:47) So catchy. So catchy, yeah. I love the dance hall stuff and the early stuff. Okay, so let's talk about that. Speaker 2 (3:53) It had a dance hall vibe. The video had some amazing dancing, which also caught people's eye. And you could hear her patois. And I was like, where is this patois from? So let's back up a little bit and talk about where Rihanna's from. She's from Barbados, which I think makes her... Barbadian? Speaker 1 (4:12) Well, I mean, I admit I just learned this word recently. So I love that you don't call someone from Barbados a Barbadian. What? You do, actually, technically. But with the patois, it becomes Bajan. Because Barbadian, the D becomes Barbajan. And they're called Bajans. And I found this really cool clip where Rihanna has her Barbadian or Bajan patois. And she talks about her pride. Check this out. This is Rihanna speaking at a graduation. I'm Speaker 3 (4:38) not sure if it's good afternoon yet. The world is going to know that we badger to the bone. No matter if it's the accent. Speaker 3 (4:49) We Speaker 1 (4:49) beige into the bone. That's Rihanna at National Independence Honors Day. I love that. Oh, Speaker 2 (4:54) that's so cool. It's so fun to hear her voice, you know, when it's not singing. Right. You know, she's just got charm in those vocal chords. By the way, I think you have an interesting story about why she goes by the name Rihanna. Well, Speaker 1 (5:05) I understand that when she was signed, very young, by the way, she's a teenager, like 15, 16-ish aged teenager. You know, her name is really Robin Rihanna Fenty, as all the big... fans know already. But her middle name is Rihanna. Her first name is Robin with a Y. And at the time she was signed, there was already a Robin. That's right. The Dancing on My Own Robin, who we all know and love from Sweden. Oh, Speaker 2 (5:28) yeah. Okay. Yeah, because it's got the Y in there. It's got the Y. There's also Robinette. There's Robinette, but Speaker 1 (5:32) there's no Y in there. There were too many Robins, basically. So she goes by Robin to her friends, apparently. Speaker 2 (5:37) And just to make one of those wonderful connections that we do on the show, T.I. had the same problem because he was known as Tip. Oh, Speaker 1 (5:44) really? Speaker 2 (5:45) got signed, they were like, there's already a Speaker 1 (5:47) Q-tip. Speaker 2 (5:47) So that's when he went by T.I. A Speaker 1 (5:50) lot of second choices out there. I think Paul McCartney didn't want to play bass either, but I think John beat him to guitar. So he's like, all right, I'll play bass. Happens. You get there second. Speaker 2 (5:57) So Ponda Replay comes out. And the reason Ponda Replay releases a single is when she gets over to the States, there are a lot of people who want to meet with her. And one of those people that she auditions for is Jay-Z. Jay-Z brings her into his office. She auditions for him. He's immediately blown away. He tells L.A. Reid, we have to sign her. In fact, he told the employees at Def Jam, do not let her leave the building until we have a contract. And so apparently she's sitting there for hours. I think I read somewhere where the contract got signed at like 2 or 3 a.m. in the morning. Speaker 1 (6:30) But Speaker 2 (6:30) this was like a new artist. By the way, just like Beyonce, when she was originally getting sort of shopped, they were... She had two backup singers. Not even backups. They were sort of like Speaker 1 (6:42) a Speaker 2 (6:42) girl group. Oh, right. They were like Missy Elliott. They Speaker 1 (6:45) were doing three-part harmony stuff. You're right. Yeah. Speaker 2 (6:47) And I guess people immediately saw, like, no, that's the one. This girl's special. This is the one that's really special. So Ponda Replay, really big hit that summer. Really big hit in the clubs where I was playing it. And the second single comes out. Doesn't do as much, but that's fine. It's her first album. And it has that very Bayesian feel, if you want to call it that. Next album, she's still playing with that sort of tropical sound. And the second album has a huge hit on it. And that song is S.O.S. S Speaker 3 (7:20) .O.S. Speaker 2 (7:25) Now, when SOS comes out, this is like 2006. We're in the heart of the decade. And, you know, 80s retro was so big. Like everything from like, I think it started with like The Wedding Singer. But like all the millennials, like they're going back to the music of their childhood, the way that like Gen X had gone back to disco. So all these 80s songs are coming back. For those who don't hear it, SOS contains a very prominent sample by this group. Speaker 3 (8:06) I Speaker 2 (8:07) feel like those claps are like Pethlothian. Every time I hear Speaker 1 (8:10) it, I feel like I got to go. It's a real special clap sound. And that's actually just to be super like musicologically accurate. It's both a sample and an interpolation. Oh, Speaker 2 (8:18) I Speaker 1 (8:18) believe it. Yeah, there's a sample of the loop of the... of the beat and the baseline at the top. And then the synth is actually replaying the dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. It sounds Speaker 2 (8:28) like throatier. What is that? It feels a little grittier, a little more gritty. Yeah. It's got some more texture. J Speaker 1 (8:34) .R. Rodham is the producer, co-wrote it with Evan Bogart, who is the son of the Speaker 2 (8:38) founder. Speaker 1 (8:38) I didn't know J.R. Rodham did that. J.R. Rodham had a run. He had a run and it was his choice to pick up that sample. And one thing I heard Evan Bogart, who by the way, is the son of Casablanca Records. I didn't know that. How many Speaker 2 (8:49) Bogarts in this business could there be? Speaker 1 (8:51) There's two that are related, at least. I heard him give a talk about this song, and one thing I was going to ask you about, actually, is he mentions that at the time this song came out, there was something, the BPM was much faster than hip hop DJs were used to. I was going to ask you about your experience, because he mentioned this is much faster than people were used to. This is Speaker 2 (9:06) 137. Okay, this is like a no... This is a no man's land in some ways in hip hop. Because even Speaker 1 (9:12) half time, that's like super slow at 69 or whatever. Yeah, Speaker 2 (9:15) it's probably around like 69. It's like 68.5. You can go half time at 69. You can always go half time. That's like Speaker 1 (9:22) reggae tempo. And Speaker 2 (9:23) by the way, by 2010, I'd say, once Drake and Migos and a bunch of, there are a lot of songs at 65, you know, that you could blame. At this time, you got to realize Missy Elliott. Ludicrous. T.I. Like, this is a time when everybody's having fun, I would say, between 98 BPM and maybe topping out about 120. Right. So, like, this song is in a weird zone. Yeah, Speaker 1 (9:45) you can't get it by going halftime to 69. No. And you're speeding everything up if you're going to 137. How ironic that we were talking Speaker 2 (9:50) just this morning just to get really nerdy about the math of it. If you play a song that is... three quarters the time of another song. They actually can line up in a weird time signature way. But you've got to do the math in your head and you've got to line it up perfectly. You've really got to be feeling it. And yeah, there were times when I literally had to stop the music and then go to SOS because SOS was a big hit in the clubs. It's one or Speaker 1 (10:11) the other. But yeah, it Speaker 2 (10:12) was a really weird tempo for the time. You've got all Speaker 1 (10:15) your DJ techniques for doing that. You can send something into a reverb cloud for a minute and then bring something in. There's all ways you can do it. But that's a DJ challenge. That's next level. Speaker 2 (10:25) You know, drummers and people who are really good at math make great DJs. You know, and I don't think the two are mutually self-exclusive, obviously. By the way, one of the reasons we even do this podcast was you did a TikTok where you talked about Tainted Love. Yeah. And I was just Speaker 1 (10:40) like, hmm, I wonder if he's going to bring up Gloria Jones. You know, I was like prepared to get in your comments and hate. And then, of course, you did not let me down. I'm a Northern Soul fan and a Mark Speaker 2 (10:48) Boland fan. Oh, by the way, we've got to do a Northern Soul episode. And we've got Speaker 1 (10:51) to do a T-Rex episode. Oh, my gosh. Absolutely. Speaker 2 (10:53) Tainted Love by Soft Cell is a cover of this song by Gloria Jones. Speaker 2 (11:11) I mean, give it up to Soft Cell. They threw in the claps. They did. They kept it. It was like Gloria Jones does not have claps there. Soft Cell does have Speaker 1 (11:19) claps. Speaker 2 (11:19) They slowed the Speaker 1 (11:19) tempo down a little bit, though. The Gloria Jones is much faster. Oh, absolutely. Speaker 2 (11:22) I mean, you feel the ennui in Soft Cell's Tainted Love. And then, where did our love go when it comes in with that part at the end of their version? It's just transcendent. Gloria Jones Speaker 1 (11:34) is a wonderful singer. As I mentioned before, she was married to Mark Bolan from T-Rex. Unfortunately, was driving the car. that crashed when he died. A very tragic story. But the Gloria Jones version is from 1965. It was not a hit at the time. It was actually a flop. The reason why Mark Allman knows about this track is because there's this movement in the early 70s in England called Northern Soul, where a small group of DJs picked up these obscure American mid-60s R &B and soul records. These 45s is actually... kind of an accident of history that just this one British DJ goes to America and buys a bunch of records from someone who Speaker 2 (12:11) died. And Speaker 1 (12:12) these are records that were never hits, but they sound like they could have been hits. Speaker 2 (12:16) Like Speaker 1 (12:16) if they had been signed to Motown, they might have Speaker 2 (12:18) been. Speaker 1 (12:18) These would be in the canon. So it turns out that... Mark Almond, by the way, different Mark with the same spelling with the C, is a coat check boy at one of these Northern Soul nights in England in the late 70s, which is where he hears the original Gloria Jones version. Oh, wow. That's so cool. Yeah, pretty cool. Speaker 2 (12:34) I love that. I love that. Not to bring it always back to some of my jobs, but some of the best DJs I hired while I was working at the Standard Hotels were not people who came into the Standard Hotel as DJs. They were the people who worked at the front desk. Oh, Speaker 1 (12:49) that's interesting. They were Speaker 2 (12:50) sometimes the mob. who were in the boxed installments and stuff. Because of their night-to Speaker 1 (12:53) -night, they're kind of picking up on what works. They were picking up, and they were like, Speaker 2 (12:56) hey, you know, could I ever audition to be a DJ here? And sometimes they would have amazing taste in music, and sort of like the Coachek guy, they ended up creating amazing... careers in music on their own. Well, Speaker 1 (13:06) that's kind Speaker 2 (13:06) of Speaker 1 (13:06) a thread on this show that I really love is like the fact of like, you can be in your bedroom and kind of make music and sort of guess what people's tastes will be. Or if you're a DJ, you see firsthand what people are responding to. Yeah, Speaker 2 (13:16) you Speaker 1 (13:16) see the reaction firsthand. So Speaker 2 (13:17) it's a really, it Speaker 1 (13:17) can be a different way of music making. And I saw the reaction firsthand. Speaker 2 (13:20) I mean, Rihanna, she was killing it. Like her songs. Once SOS was out and a whole new generation of people were dancing to it, I was like, oh, she's one of the challengers to the Beyonce throne. And there were a lot of people who were going for that throne in this period. You've got to realize Beyonce is huge, but not so huge that there aren't imitators and other people who want that kind of pop success. The same way The Beatles spawned a lot of people who were kind of like The Beatles, but a little Speaker 1 (13:48) bit different. British Invasion. Sure. Speaker 2 (13:49) During this time, Beyonce... you know, during this part of Beyonce's reign, you've got Rihanna coming up. And there's some who like, you know, people forget that they were almost at that level. There was Anne-Marie who had the song, Just One Thing. Speaker 2 (14:12) By the way, One Thing, fun fact, produced by Rich Harrison, the same guy who produced Crazy Speaker 3 (14:18) in Love. Oh Speaker 2 (14:18) my God, I can't believe Speaker 1 (14:19) you Speaker 2 (14:19) said it, because Speaker 1 (14:19) that's Speaker 2 (14:20) what I was hearing Speaker 1 (14:20) in my head. I'm like, oh, that's a... Speaker 2 (14:22) Rich Harrison, I feel like in the mid-aughts, he could do no wrong. That's a Delphonic beat Speaker 1 (14:26) or whatever. He did Crazy Speaker 2 (14:26) in Love. Yeah. He did Amory, One Thing. He did the Jennifer Lopez song, Get Right. Speaker 1 (14:33) Okay. And Speaker 2 (14:33) all these songs, notably, had that live drummer. Right. feel to them. But Speaker 1 (14:38) there's a specific type of break that he's going for too, because he's playing on the ride cymbal and it's kind of like an almost like Afro-Cuban beat. It's not like a straight eighth beat. And that's a, by the way, we've talked about the meters on the show a bunch. That is a Zigaboo Modaliste beat. So he's sampling on that track. We just heard the sample of O Calcutta from the first meters record in 1969. I have some stems that I don't have on the dream category. I would love stems from the meters one day so we can do a proper meter show. Speaker 2 (15:05) Dude, Speaker 1 (15:05) every Speaker 2 (15:05) time we do this show, I think of at least one song. I'm like, oh, luxury, please find me those stems because I realize I really want Speaker 1 (15:10) to talk about them. Speaker 2 (15:10) The dream stem Speaker 1 (15:11) list is a very long one. Got to get some ABBA. Got to get some ELO. And don't forget about Ciara. She had a Speaker 2 (15:17) lot of hits, and we all thought that maybe she was going to take the throne. Speaker 3 (15:25) Supersonic, hypnotic, funky, fresh. With my body so melodic, this beat rolls right through my chest. So Speaker 2 (15:32) you can see that there are a lot of people who are trying to be the R &B diva with the major, major pop hits. But at the end of the day, Rihanna is going to do all of that and so much more. I was shocked when we were researching for this episode. Rihanna is the number two female artist. Of all time in terms of record sales and streams. Speaker 1 (15:55) That is surprising. Who's number Speaker 2 (15:58) one? Apparently, according to our research, it's actually still Madonna. But Taylor and Mariah and Beyonce are all right there, you know, nipping at her heels. But Rihanna's number two. Speaker 1 (16:07) I would not have guessed that. That's incredible. I would have guessed maybe Taylor or Beyonce neck and neck for number one. Speaker 2 (16:12) Me too. Speaker 1 (16:12) Yeah. Speaker 2 (16:14) So Luxury, we're so excited to have the stems and all the L-As and the A-As, but this song has a really fascinating genesis that might surprise some people. Talk to us about how this song gets made. Speaker 1 (16:25) All right, let's talk about how the song happened. This is one of those songs which is just almost a magical story of like, it came together so quickly that I think the songwriters themselves were surprised that they had just done this right in front of their very eyes and ears. It happens in Atlanta. This is a group of... Everything Speaker 2 (16:42) good happens in Atlanta. Let's be clear. Speaker 1 (16:44) The producer team of Tricky and the Dream, that's Christopher Stewart. a.k.a. Tricky, Terry Snash, a.k.a. The Dream, and also their third member. Together, they comprise Red Zone, the production team, and that's Kook Harrell, and he's an