“Woo” by Rihanna

Rihanna’s “Woo” can perhaps be classified as one of the more realistic breakup songs out there, one that illustrates the types of varying emotions a person often goes through when enduring such a sad event.

Rihanna, who is addressing her ex, starts off by being vindictive. In other words, she feels she is better than his new girl and seems to be looking forward to their relationship failing. To illustrate those points, it can even be said that she is mocking the addressee, i.e. reminding her ex that she’s the one truly ‘made him cry’ – and by the looks of things intensely at that. And the taunts continue as she lets her former lover know something like if needs his heart broken anew, then he should ‘send for her’.

In fact the phrase “send for me” plays an important role on this track. But as the song progresses, the vocalist finds it increasingly impossible to shroud the fact that she is still in love with the addressee. So by the time the phrase is used again in the second chorus (after the third verse), now it is more literal, i.e. Rihanna wanting her ex to call her back. And this is because, most simply put, without him she has been suffering emotionally and is under the impression that he too isn’t fully satisfied with his current love life.

When was “Woo” released?

This track is from “Anti”, the album Rihanna dropped via Roc Nation and a label she owns called Westbury Records on 28 January 2016.

This song was not released as a single. However, as to be expected of a Rihanna album, “Anti” itself was a chart-topping, multi-platinum hit.

Travis Scott

Travis Scott officially serves as an additional vocalist on this song, not a co-headliner. That is due to the fact that “Woo” interpolates a song The Weeknd put together under that same name, which does in fact feature Scott. The Weeknd’s was never formally released but did manage to find itself online in 2018, under the name Woo (Demo).

Credits

Owing to the aforementioned interpolation, the official writers of Rihanna’s “Woo” includes The Weeknd and Jeremih. The other credited as authors of “Woo” are:

• Rihanna
• Derrus Rachel
• Jean Baptiste
• The-Dream
• Travis Scott
• Hit-Boy
• Anthony Caruso
• G Koop

The latter four names on that list also produced the track with Kuk Harrell.

Interesting to Note

It is believed that at the time Rihanna release this song and its album, she and Travis were dating. However, it has still been noted that his contributions to “Anti” were minimal, i.e. only making an appearance on “Woo” and even then not having actual lyrics per se but rather serving as a hype man.