For a moment, let’s pretend it’s the year 2005. A young Rihanna releases catchy ‘Pon De Replay’ and it would be twos years before this “good girl went bad”, nonetheless baby steps towards her 7 Grammys had been made.

Kanye West‘s “Late Registration’ is being hailed as a masterpiece album as ‘Gold Digger ft Jamie Foxx’ topped music charts world-wide.

Paul McCartney had just released his 13th solo album ‘Chaos and Creation in the Backyard’ and remained in the US album charts for over 10 weeks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OJjwMj7jtw

Fast forward ten years and the three aforementioned music artists have teamed up and released a collaboration single entitled ‘Four Five Seconds‘.  Kanye previewed the single at the IHeartRadio Summit event in LA on thursday straight off his laptop.

The song has a stripped back arrangement with Rihanna and Kanye providing vocals over Paul McCartney’s single guitar part. This is the first music we’ve heard from Rihanna in over a year and many are happy to hear more ballads from the singer. ‘Stay’ was a massive hit and all but proved Rihanna doesn’t have to belt out an 8 octave manifest to prove her voice is special.

While the singing is a far cry from Kanye of 05, has he ever been known to stay in one lane with his music? Kanye has always made it clear that his main focus is to be an innovator and a visionary in the music business.  Whether you think it works or it doesn’t, Kanye will continue to journey on; in the end we’re just along for the ride.

Have a listen and let us know what you think on Twitter!

“FourFiveSeconds” is downloadable from iTunes now.