Beyonce gave us direction, and she had like four or five studios going at one time, but then she only sings what she likes. "Back Up" was one of those records.

I remember when I first got the call from Beyoncé to work on the project, and the mood that she was in and she was feeling, she wanted New Orleans-inspired music to be incorporated to the stuff she was doing. Creole-type stuff. Zydeco... She wanted that type of inspiration.

I have a camp so I brought my writers, LaShawn Daniels and at the time, Anesha and Antea [Birchett], they were sisters, and this girl Delisha [Thomas] and Makeba [Riddick]. I brought basically five writers to work on different ideas. You either make the cut or you don't.

It's not a normal recording shift where you do a song and you get a day to tweak it and the third day you mix it. It's like double the work in the period of time it would take to do one.

It's just kind of, we do a lot of songs when it's an artist of that magnitude, like Beyoncé. You're not sending her one song; you're sending her 20 ideas.

Beyonce gave us direction, and she had like four or five studios going at one time, but then she only sings what she likes. "Back Up" was one of those records.

She [Beyonce]is probably the closest thing we've seen to Michael Jackson as far as having that determination and drive that I've ever seen.