Naughty Boy on Beyonce Collaboration & Zayn Malik Fallout: ‘We Were Genuinely Best Friends’

Naughty Boy talked to The Guardian about his career, and, naturally, the conversation turned to his professional relationships with Beyonce (good) and Zayn Malik (not so good).

On the positive side, Naughty Boy — real name Shahid Khan — is super proud of his recent collaboration with Queen Bey, “Runnin (Lose It All).”

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“There’s no point in me getting fangirl about it,” he says about the ultra-cool phone call. “It’s unprofessional. She’s the queen. You don’t ask the queen to be on your song, but…yeah, we spoke for 20 minutes. … It’s boss shit. She just signs off with a B.”

But while Bey was a strong vote of confidence in his camp, the fallout with former One Direction member Malik clearly continues to weigh on him.

Zayn Malik Torches ‘Fat Joke’ Naughty Boy on Twitter

“People thought we were cooking something, plotting — we were just chilling. Swear,” Naughty Boy shared. “He just left the biggest pop band in the world, he needed a mate and I was a mate. We’re not the kind of business-savvy heads people were assuming we were. We were in a bubble and didn’t realise the magnitude. … With Zayn, it was different because we were genuinely best friends doing the best friend thing.”

Despite rumors of a fallout over Naughty Boy leaking their collaboration — something he says didn’t happen — he’s clearly hoping the two will be friends again before too long.

“I think Zayn’s incredibly talented and his voice is amazing and the world doesn’t know that yet,” he said. “The world doesn’t know how gifted he actually is, so I think the best thing for him to do now is to go a bit radio silent and let the music do the talking, because then he won’t have to get into Twitter wars with Calvin Harris or me, or whoever. There’s no music out there, so right now he’s just the guy who left One Direction, but I know different, because I know him.”

Read Naughty Boy’s full chat with The Guardian here.

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