Rihanna : “Chris Brown – Is The Hottest R&B Artist Right Now”   
Rihanna’s collaborations with Chris Brown made plenty of noise when they were released online last month. Now the pop star is speaking out about her musical reunion with her ex-boyfriend. The former couple recorded remixes for their songs “Birthday Cake” and “Turn Up the Music.” “The first song that came about was ‘Birthday Cake,’” she told Ryan Seacrest. “I mean we ended up recording them at the same time and executing them together, but I reached out to him about doing ‘Birthday Cake’ because that’s the only person that really—it made sense to do the record.” Despite their tumultuous past, she immediately thought of her ex. “Just as a musician despite everything else that was going to be the person,” she continued. “You know I thought about rappers, and I’ve done that so many times, and the hottest R&B artist out right now is Chris Brown. So I wanted him on the track, and then in turn he was like, ‘Why don’t you do the remix to my track?’ and it was a trade off.” She hopes the remixes will bring their fans together. “We did two records. One for my fans. One for his fans, and that way our fans can come together. There shouldn’t be a divide. You know? It’s music, and it’s innocent.” While she just shot a video for “Where Have You Been” off her current album Talk That Talk, Rihanna is already thinking about the direction of her new music. “Sonically—I can’t explain it. But I’m excited about it. I have the sound already. So it’s just a matter of execution!” she said. The Armani spokeswoman, who is executive producing a fashion competition in the U.K., also has plans to launch a clothing line of her own. “I’m really pursuing a fashion line of my own,” she revealed. “I want to design. This is also a road that I want to earn it. So I’m working with designers. Designers that I respect, and [fashion] companies that I respect. I want people to really trust me before I just say ‘Buy it, because it’s mine.’” While she’s enjoying being blonde, she eventually wants to go darker. “I really want to go black,” she said, “and I was kind of in a natural color so it was easier to go blonde first, because black is such a harsh color to come back from. So I wanted to try it out to see if I liked it, and now I really am a little attached to it. I keep going lighter and lighter. So I’ll just have some fun with it, and when I get bored I’ll just…black is an easy change from here.” Rihanna makes her dramatic big screen debut in the live-action film Battleship, hitting theaters May 18. “You can only imagine how nervous I was going in to such a big-budgeted film really as an amateur,” she said. “Really not knowing anything, but it was immense. It was an impeccable experience.”