Rihanna's "Umbrella": Wartime Pop Song?
By: Julianne Shepherd
POSTED: 15:41 EST, July 24, 2007

You can't walk down a street without running into someone - whether preteen, grandma, or hot dog vendor - singing some part of Rihanna's "Umbrella." Aloud. And loud. Ella, ella, eh, eh, eh, eh. And so it goes. The single's had an interminable presence since it debuted less than four months ago, as it's hovered at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 for no less than 14 weeks. Its ebullient hook and strong emotion also helped redefine Young Ms. Fenty into a bona fide, larger-than-life pop vixen - Little Miss Sunshine, as it were.

But "Umbrella" was not initially meant as a love note from Rihanna to her man-friends. "Umbrella" scribe Terius Nash, aka the Dream, wrote it as a wartime lullaby, for his people who are stationed in Iraq. "Emotionally, I was tapped into what the world was goin through - the war. We losin a lot of those people over there. Most of those troops are from Georgia," says the singer / songwriter, who resides in Atlanta. "I have a best friend that was in the Army. I have another friend that was injured. To me, 'Umbrella' meant a lot emotionally about what the country was going though. I don't think the times we're in are really as bad as it was back in the day, but we ain't never seen it before. You can hear somebody tell you but you don't really know how the '60s went down until something pops off and it's like, 'Wow. Can you believe a human being could do that? Yeah, they really could. People have that power to cause harm. I felt like that song had the power to deliver us from some of that."

And so "ella, eh, eh, eh," and its melancholy vocal dip take on new meaning - its relevance and resonance make a little more sense, perhaps. The sentiment and the melody - the image of the actual umbrella - provide a kind of psychic shelter for a country in turmoil. Those people belting it on the street - maybe they just need it. Need something simple and sweet.

Rihanna wasn't the first recipient in line for the song. "I wrote it for Britney Spears," says Dream, who had penned "Me Behind the Music" for Spears and Madonna two years prior. "She was going through a lot at that particular point, especially with her kids. I wrote it from the perspective of how a mother would sing to her children whenever they're going through something. And it actually transcended into meaning a lot for everybody."

When the Sam Cooke-loving, Diane Warren-worshipping scribe wrote "Umbrella" - in 17 minutes, so he claims - he had just come off a modest but successful run of hits. Well, it was a hustle, mostly. He had "Me Against the Music" and B2K's "Everything" under his belt. He'd begun work on Complicated, the 2005 album by R&B queen Nivea - who, a year later, would become his wife. He wrote "Bed" for J. Holiday. "Umbrella" eventually landed in the hands of Def Jam head LA Reid - who passed it on to Rihanna, case closed.

But the next Dream track to trigger your Pavlov impulse and tickle your emotional cockles is coming from the man himself - starting with the unstoppable "Shawty is the Shit" aka "Shawty is a Ten," a luscious track that turns gossamer pop and B into an ode to the neighbor girls who grow up into butterflies, all in Dream's high, airy vocal register.

"I'm creating these three-minute-and-thirty-second pop albums. At the end of the day I create them like a movie - I just try to get at the emotion of it," explains Dream. "['Shawty is the Shit'] is how I think I'd feel if this girl rolls up - She's 23 and I never paid any attention. Like, Shawty you da shit! Wow! She fucked me up! This is crazy! Now you the most talked about thing on the planet! You have to think about the emotion of the guy that dated Beyonce when he was 16 or 15. It sounds like I'm having fun in the song, but if you really listen to it, it's like, Wow, I missed it! It's a lesson: you just never know what's gonna happen to somebody."

Dream is currently working on his own album, Love Me All Summer, Hate Me All Winter, out this fall. He shoots the video for "Shawty is a Ten" on August 31 in Atlanta.

Rihanna graces the double cover of the latest, great and sadly last issue of VIBE Vixen. Shout and love to Vixen chicas. You'll still be our stars.