Songfacts®:

• In the '90s, Snoop Dogg and DMX both asked the musical question, what's my name? Here, Rihanna asks the same question, but in the form of pillow talk with her lover.
• "What's My Name?" is the second single from Rihanna's fifth studio album, Loud. The song was written by Ester Dean, whose previous credits include Usher's "Hot Toddy," Katy Perry's "Firework" and Christina Aguilera's "Not Myself Tonight." Dean also had a hit under own name with "Drop it Low." Rihanna said of Dean to Billboard magazine: "She really captured me, everything I would say and how I would say it. Some people get it halfway right. She just gets it and knows exactly what you want to hear."
• This was produced by the Norwegian production team Stargate, who also worked on the Loud tracks "Only Girl (In The World)," and "S&M." The duo previously collaborated with Rihanna on her hits "Don't Stop The Music," "Hate That I Love You" and "Rude Boy."
• The Toronto rapper Drake is featured on this track, which finds the two artists trading come-ons. Tor Erik Hermansen of Stargate told Billboard magazine how Rihanna personally presented the track to the Canadian MC. "She played the record to Drake backstage somewhere to try to get him on a verse," he recalled. "She's calling me up saying, 'Where are the files?' That's one thing you don't hear often from artists on her level.""Drake is the hottest rapper out right now," Rihanna added, "and we've always been trying to work together. He's the only person I thought could really understand the melody of the song, and the minute he heard it he said, 'I know exactly what I'm going to do. I love it.' And he did it like three days later."
• Drake and Rihanna had a short-lived fling a year or so before this was recorded. The Canadian MC addressed their affair on his track "Fireworks."
• This was Rihanna's eighth US #1 hit, but the first for Drake. They teamed for another chart-topper in 2016 with "Work."
• When "What's My Name?" topped the UK singles chart in January 2011, Rihanna became the first female solo artist in chart history to achieve #1 singles in five consecutive years. The only other solo artist to equal this achievement was a singer you might have heard of called Elvis Presley between 1957-63.
• The song's co-writer Ester Dean told Billboard magazine Rihanna's biggest strength is that "she doesn't try to sound like you; she sounds like herself. She's not in there trying to figure out how she can beat you singing your song. She goes in there and says, 'I'm going to sing this song because I f---ing love it.'"