Ciara sings part of the hook on her remix and adds her own verse, as do all the rappers.Īnother song the hip-hop star likens to Lil Jon’s “Lovers and Friends.” “It’s exactly what you would expect if Ludacris and Trey Songz were to do a f**king record together,” he laughed about the X-rated material. One features Rick Ross and Twista, the other has Ciara and Pitbull, and Fabolous appears on a third. There will be three or four official remixes to Luda’s chart-topping hit. “Anybody who’s ever been in a relationship has definitely thought in their head that they can’t live with the person and they can’t live without them at the same damn time,” Ludacris said of this number that’s sure to appeal to his female fans. “Can’t Live With You, Can’t Live Without You” featuring Monica The Infinity production is the album’s most pop-sounding record with a catchy hook that recalls Positive K’s “I Got a Man”: “I know you got a man, man, man, but tell me what your man, man, man gotta do with me?” a male voice sings, while the female responds, “I know you got a girl, girl, girl, but tell me what your girl, girl, girl gotta do with me?”ĥ. It won’t be the second single, but may be the third or fourth. Luda called this his “radio smash” featuring “radio controller” Flo Rida. “That’s one of the records that we gonna put out there,” he told the audience of the potential single. The chorus is bound to get stuck in your head: “My chick bad, my chick ’hood, my chick do stuff that your chick wish she could.” He even drops a reference to Tiger Woods’ wife. “She’s an animated female and I’m an animated rapper myself,” remarked Luda of his pairing with It girl Nicki Minaj. This one is on some “‘Lovers and Friends’ reminiscent type sh*t.” “You would never think that Swizz produced this song,” he said of the R&B-flavored jam. “Ya’ll don’t f**k us, ni**as we f**k you,” spits the Queen Bee. Luda said he got the “old Lil’ Kim” rapping again. “If men sleep around, we some players/ But for women, they be saying, ‘Hey ho,’” he raps on what he calls the sequel to 2000’s controversial “Ho” from his debut album. The title raised some eyebrows when it was first announced, but Luda explained the concept of how it tackles the double standard of men sleeping around and being called players and pimps, but when women do the same thing, they’re called hos. Ludacris - 'Battle Of The Sexes' on DTP/Island/Def Jam in-stores March 9. Times Online - Sade emerges from her country retreat “People always used to say, ‘What’s it like to see your face on the cover of a magazine?’ But it doesn’t mean anything to me at all. Taller in person than she appears on stage (she is about 5ft 8in) with that large, domed head, wide-set eyes and coil of jet-black hair, she has an exotic allure that she professes not to care a fig about. On the eve of her 51st birthday, her face is unlined and she is still striking. She doesn’t look to have aged much during her long absence. Above her glamorous image, some wag had sprayed the observation: “This bitch sings when she wants to.” Sade thinks this hilarious. She tells me about a graffitied poster of herself that her guitarist Stuart Matthewman spotted in New York. Unlike her songs, which are often freighted with introspective sadness and regret, her conversation is punctuated with a lively and very English self-mockery. Paradoxically, in person she is open, friendly and relaxed - she’s happy to let me into her spacious Georgian house in leafy north London - and willing to laugh at herself. Since then, she has only surfaced a few times - and this is the only face-to-face interview she will consent to now. And more than half of those albums were sold from the mid-1990s onwards, when Sade all but disappeared from view. She is the most successful solo female artist Britain has ever produced: she has sold more than 50m albums in a career that stretches back 27 years. Despite or maybe because of that, the reverence she commands is palpable. It’s 10 years since her last album release, the 2000 offering, Lovers Rock. The most reclusive British singer of the 1980s has kept such a low profile since her Smooth Operator days - one tour in 14 years - that, when we meet at the London office of her record label to hear the songs from her new album, Soldier of Love, I am the only person in the room who has met her before. Sade is so very private, so extremely wary of the press that her friends - all of whom are bound to silence - have nicknamed her Howie, after Howard Hughes.