I'd stopped doing music all of a sudden, and because of Chill and Jay and B, I got half of my album on a solo project. Then I get a call a week later and Jay is like, "Yo, Janet [Jackson] likes one of the records. We'll take five but are you cool with giving Janet one?" I was like, dude, we can do whatever you want to do.

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

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 don't like when everything sounds the same.

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."

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.

Beyoncé can handle any record you put in front of her. Any record that pushes her in that direction, it would have been good to be on the project.