"Umbrella" is a song by Barbadian singer Rihanna, released worldwide on March 29, 2007, through Def Jam Recordings as the lead single and opening track from her third studio album, Good Girl Gone Bad (2007). Its featured artist, American rapper Jay-Z, co-wrote the song with its producers Tricky Stewart and Kuk Harrell, with additional writing contributions coming from The-Dream.

"Umbrella" received universal critical acclaim upon release and was a global success, topping the charts in 19 countries such as Australia, Canada, Germany, Spain, the Republic of Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In the UK, where the song's chart performance coincided with prolonged rain and flooding, it was one of the most played songs on radio in the 2000s. It managed to stay atop the UK Singles Chart for 10 consecutive weeks, the longest run at number one for any single of that decade, and is also one of the few songs to top the chart for at least 10 weeks. As one of the highest digital debuts in the United States at the time, it remained atop of the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 for seven consecutive weeks.

The single's accompanying music video, directed by Chris Applebaum and featuring Rihanna's nude body covered in silver paint, earned her a Video of the Year at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards and Most Watched Video on MuchMusic.com at MuchMusic Video Awards. "Umbrella" has been covered by several notable performers across various musical genres, including All Time Low, the Baseballs, Train, Manic Street Preachers, McFly, Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park, OneRepublic, Taylor Swift, and Vanilla Sky. Rihanna performed the song at the 2007 MTV Movie Awards and at the 2008 BRIT Awards, and also included it as the closing number of the Good Girl Gone Bad Tour (2008), the Last Girl on Earth (2010), and the Loud Tour (2011) as well as in the Diamonds World Tour (2013), and the Anti World Tour (2016). In 2021, Rolling Stone ranked "Umbrella" #332 on their revised list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

American songwriter and producer Christopher "Tricky" Stewart convened with Terius "The-Dream" Nash and Kuk Harrell in January 2007 at the Atlanta-based Triangle Studios to create new material. In the studio, Stewart was "messing around with a walloping hi-hat sound", which he found in GarageBand. With his attention caught by the sound, Nash asked Stewart what he was doing: "Oh, my Gosh, what is that beat?". When Stewart incorporated chords onto the hi-hat, "immediately the word popped into [Nash's] head"; he went to the vocal booth and started singing. Nash wrote the first two verses and the chorus over Stewart's skeleton track. They quickly wrote the lyrics, completing the first verse in 60 seconds. They continued into writing, adding the hook while "[Stewart] would put the next chord". In a matter of hours, they had recorded a demo of the track. The song was written with American pop singer Britney Spears in mind, whom Stewart had previously worked with on her 2003 single "Me Against the Music". Stewart and Nash thought that Spears, who had "her personal life ... a little out of control" at the time, needed a hit as a musical comeback. Spears was working on her fifth album, Blackout, so they sent a copy of the demo to Spears' management. However, Spears did not hear of the song because her label at the time, Jive rejected it, claiming they had enough songs for her to record.

Following the management's rejection of the track, Stewart and Nash dealt it out to other record labels. It was also given to British singer-songwriter Taio Cruz, who failed to convince his record company Mercury 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 towards 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."

However, since it was the Grammy season of 2007, Stewart and Nash eyed American R&B singer Mary J. Blige for the demo. Upon calling them to set the record aside for Rihanna, Stewart had played it to an associate of Blige, subsequently promising the song to her. Having heard the move of the writers, Kwak and A&R Angel Maldonado began calling Stewart and his manager, Mark Stewart, incessantly. Meanwhile, considering Blige's nominations at the Grammys, Stewart and Nash agreed to wait for her response. However, Blige failed to hear the song in full due to her obligations to the Grammys at the time and "had to sign off on the record before her reps could accept it". Finally, Reid "stepped in, trading on his power-broker status and longstanding relationship with Stewart", and admits, "I made the producers an offer they couldn't refuse." By the time Reid had successfully persuaded Stewart's camp, they "just couldn't say no". On giving up the record to Reid's camp, Mark Stewart comments, "We knew Rihanna's album would be out in a few months. Mary wasn't even in an album cycle yet. We made the sensible business decision."

When [Rihanna] recorded the 'ellas,' you knew it was about to be the jump-off and your life was about to change if you had anything to do with that record.

Rihanna recorded "Umbrella", with vocal production by Thaddis "Kuk" Harrell, at Westlake Recording Studios in Los Angeles. Initially, Stewart admitted he was still reluctant as to whether Rihanna was the right artist to record the song, but following the recording of the "ella, ella" catch phrase, he felt they were onto "something". Following Rihanna's recording, Def Jam CEO-rapper Jay-Z added his rap. However, Jay-Z rewrote his verse without the awareness of Stewart and Nash. Stewart could not understand it, but later realized it "made sense" instead of the first version. Stewart noted that "from a songwriter's standpoint, he just really made it more about the song, with the metaphors about umbrellas and about the weather versus what he had before".