According to songwriter Bibi Bourelly, “Higher” was written in only 20 minutes. She spoke to Vice about the song:

Everything happens for a reason. Working with Rihanna has changed my life. The 20 minutes it took me to write “Higher” is actually what changed my life, because, even though we wrote “Bitch Better Have My Money” first, she heard that one first.

The intoxicating ANTI track first surfaced in March 2015 as a pair of Instagram previews posted by Rihanna while drunk on whiskey at 5:00 AM.

Rihanna compared the song to “a drunk voicemail” in Vogue’s April 2016 cover story:

You know he’s wrong, and then you get drunk and you’re like, ‘I could forgive him. I could call him. I could make up with him.’ Just, desperate.