I made the record, and I sent it over to Jay Brown, who was working on Rihanna's album. He was like, "Send me that record for Rihanna."

The first two songs that I wrote, produced and demoed with my voice on it was that song and then Akon's "Sorry, Blame It On Me." The first two demos I ever wrote and demoed, the two biggest artists at the time took them.

You know Beyoncé, man. She's very quiet about how she does things. She doesn't like to let everybody know what she's about to do.

I had to learn, because as an artist myself, an artist owns that right to protect their interest of how they want to roll their project out. It's just important to give them that opportunity to roll it out the way they want to.

I don't like when everything sounds the same.

At that point, when songs got leaked, it was cool though too because then you started getting recognition beforehand.

No one's selling records anymore, so there's no income you're being robbed of. I think that you should be in alignment with the world. The world is about sharing now, so as long as it's out there, it should be there. I think it's fine.