 Following the management's rejection of the track, Stewart and Nash dealt it out to other record labels. It was also given to English singer-songwriter Taio Cruz, who failed to convince his record company to release it. It was then opted by Island Def Jam chairman Antonio "L.A." Reid, a friend of Stewart who established his first studio. By early February 2007, the demo was sent to Reid's right-hand woman, A & R executive Karen Kwak, who passed it along to Reid with a message confirming that they had found a song suited for Rihanna, who was working on her third studio album, Good Girl Gone Bad, at the time. Reid immediately sent the demo to Rihanna, who was also positive of it: "When the demo first started playing, I was like, This is interesting, this is weird. ... But the song kept getting better. I listened to it over and over. I said, ' I need this record. I want to record it tomorrow."
