Anytime a person has Disney World in their backyard, you know they're thinking big.

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.

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 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.

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.

That's common in our industry, where some songs make the cut, some don't. It's bad when it doesn't make the cut and you don't get in on the project.