Rihanna performed with Coldplay at the Grammys. (Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic)Gwyneth Paltrow may not want to watch Coldplay's new music video for "Princess of China" — because her husband Chris Martin gets pretty cozy with the very sexy Rihanna. The Asian-themed video begins with the British singer walking through a desert and arriving at a heavily-guarded city, where his former flame (played by Rihanna) resides (the song is about the regrets of a broken relationship). After Martin sword-fights a ninja, he moves closer to Rihanna, who has described her look in the video as "gangsta goth geisha." After her verse — during which she dances seductively clad in a tight black dress with a thigh-high slit a la Angelina Jolie — the two emotionally sing to each other nose-to-nose while kneeling in the same desert he had earlier walked. At one point, Rihanna even runs her hand through Martin's hair and caresses his cheek as he stares into her eyes.
Martin has said that he wrote the song, from Coldplay's fifth album, Mylo Xyloto, with the "We Found Love" singer in mind as his duet partner. "In like a dream scenario, we had a song that I'd secretly kind of written to see if Rihanna would want to sing it," he told MTV News last fall. "So we came up with the idea of asking her to sing it with us, and, to our great surprise, she said okay … but it took a while to pluck up the courage to ask her. We did a show in Las Vegas and I met her and said, 'Do you think there's any chance?' I was very Hugh Grant-like and spluttering about it."
Even though Martin and Rihanna had never met before that point, they certainly run in the same circle. The Coldplay singer is best friends with Jay-Z, who was the mentor of Rihanna when she first signed with Def Jam Recordings and the two have collaborated on a number of hits, including her song "Umbrella." And when Chris Brown performed at the MTV Video Music Awards last August, Jay-Z very noticeably remained seated and expressionless as everyone around him gave Brown a standing ovation.
Martin's wife Gwyneth has been a staple at Jay-Z and Kanye West's Watch the Throne tour in Europe. Last week, she even brought their two young children, Apple, 8, and Moses, 6, to a show in London. On Friday night, she attended the duo's Paris concert with Jay-Z's wife Beyonce, and ended up causing controversy after she tweeted a photo of herself with producer The-Dream and another man with the caption "Ni**as in paris for real." Although she was referencing the rap duo's hit song — which they did a record 11 times in a row that night — many on Twitter felt she didn't have the right to use the n-word.
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