The 28-year-old singer said she would not apologise for the video, which sees a group of black women jiggling their bottoms, adding that she chose her backing dancers through their talent, not based on their skin colour.

Allen received criticism on the release of the new video on Tuesday, with bloggers and tweeters claiming it was guilty of the “denigration of black female bodies”.

Tweeting yesterday, Allen said: “If anyone thinks for a second that I requested specific ethnicities for the video, they’re wrong.