Beyoncé feat. Jay-Z's "Crazy In Love"

Crazy baby, come and look it's so crazy right now. You're the last time and look it's so crazy right now. You're the last time and look it's so crazy right now. Come and look it's so crazy right now. That's the note. Come and look it's so crazy right now. That one note where I pointed to you, that's my favorite note in the whole song. Luxury, today we're talking about the song that marked a turning point for one of the most influential artists of all time. The moment she stepped into solo super stardom. That's right, Diallo. This song was everywhere when it came out. It topped the charts for eight straight weeks, took home not one but two Grammys, and just as importantly, remains a cultural touchstone, arguably laying the foundation for everything that followed in her career. And several other people's careers, too. Indeed. I'm so excited because we have the demo. That's right. We have the demo for this breakout song. We're talking one song, and that song is Crazy in Love by Beyonce featuring Jay-Z. If you're a fan of one song, you already know you're into the deeper story, the culture and circumstances behind unforgettable music moments, especially when the history gets complicated. That's exactly what the new season of La Brega explores. Season three of the critically acclaimed bilingual podcast dives into cultural battlegrounds from courtrooms to boxing rings to the global stage. It's a story of Puerto Rican champions and what they can teach us about identity. Listen to La Brega wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, One Song listeners, if you love our show, you should check out Trapital, the podcast where technology meets culture. Each episode, Trapital host and founder, Dan Runcie, digs into the strategy behind the media and technology that drives our attention. You'll hear Trapital explore topics like YouTube's growing influence in music and entertainment, the never-ending saga about TikTok's future and how AI is shaping the future. Media is one of the first industries to get disrupted by new tech. It's Trapital's job to keep you ahead of the latest trends. You can listen to Trapital wherever you get your podcasts. That's Trapital, T-R-A-P-I-T-A-L. I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ, Diallo Riddle. And I'm a lover, not a fighter, but I'm also producer, DJ, songwriter, and musicologist, Luxury, aka the guy who whispers interpolescence and this is one song the show where we break down the stems and stories behind iconic songs across genres and tell you why they deserve one more listen you will hear these songs like you've never heard them before and you can watch one song on youtube while you're there please like and subscribe so today we're talking about my fellow virgo queen bee beyonce i'm she's just like me in so many ways i think that every time i look at your face i'm like wow that's beyonce there's just some artists in the world that you feel a connection to and you can't put your finger on why beyonce i understand her i get it what is the connection i mean we're literally just virgos in common but also what does that mean to the end to me the meticulous detail and the perfectionism and the vision boards and world domination plans like you see that in her every like utterance and i don't have the world domination maybe to that degree but like i recognize vision boards i recognize a version of her if it was me like times 1000 times 10 million it's like those youtube videos like a thousand luxuries it gets one Beyonce yeah I might have a fighting chance maybe I think you might so Diallo when was the first time you heard Crazy in Love I don't know exactly the first time I heard it but I do know that this song marked a major shift in my DJing because before this song I will say uh I was strictly and like proudly an underground DJ like if it was a Carl Craig remix if it was the extra P remix of a of a hip-hop song that like nobody outside the hip-hop culture was into that was my lane um but i remember i was doing this party and the people who hired me they really wanted to hear this song so i was like all right they're paying me i'll give them what they wanted and i'll never forget not only when i put this song on did the dance floor go bananas it like went crazy the first note probably right from the first note but like that the way that this song is mixed the way that those the bass pumps out at the very beginning of the song i just remember like seeing this the speaker kind of rattle and shake like that like it just it moved it all moved and i was just like oh this is why people play popular songs and i remember thinking this is going to change what i what i spend and i remember looking at my dj friend who's there uh he just shook his head like sold out riddle your dj sets were pure till now quick question so you'd probably heard the song before but the context of doing it in a dance context dj context with big speakers people responding to the music that gave you a different impression of the same song that hadn't made as much of an impression on you absolutely there are a couple of songs i think that when you hear them played loud yeah they take on a totally different personality yes you know i'm thinking about mr Oizo's flat beat. I saw that ad on a commercial and I was like, that's pretty cool. But then when I heard it come out of actual club speakers, all of a sudden that I was like, oh, this is strange and perfect. Yeah, so good. And it was kind of the same way with Crazy in Love. When I heard it loud in a club, not playing out of a distant car or even through some headphones. It just took on a different personality. Maybe we're laying the groundwork for a theory about why the song is so big and iconic. It's infectious. It's right out of the gate because it is a great radio song and it's a great dance floor song. Yes. And it was an immediate like wedding favorite and bar mitzvah favorite. It's that kind of song that gets people to the dance floor. Absolutely. Within three milliseconds of hearing the first horn stab. It comes in, it takes you by the throat and it's yours for the next three and a half minutes. Yeah. What about you, my man? What was the first time you heard this song or it affected you? I remember seeing a copy of or buying a copy of this British magazine called The Face, which I would buy regularly. It was like in 2003 before there were blogs and kind of other touchstones and ways to get your like taste making cultural curation done. You know, beyond the radio and the obvious things, magazines like I was a big magazine dude, especially British import magazines. and the face was just one of my favorite they had great interviews and just really deeply tasteful like they found the cool kind of deeper stuff beyond the you know the top layer of pop culture but also this cover had beyonce on the cover something about it was like this is i was in an indie rock moment where i was starting my band i was deeply enmeshed in indie rock and like getting my stuff together for my own san francisco scene you know putting posters up the whole nine rehearsing I was deep in that space. So I wasn't really listening to the radio or paying attention to pop culture. But this The Face magazine cover with Beyonce on it for this song was like, I want to find out what this is. I'm curious. Wonderfully, in this moment, there was LimeWire. There were these early kind of file sharing methods pre-Spotify, pre-YouTube. There's no YouTube yet. So this might have been one of my first LimeWire downloads just to kind of like... The Statue of Limitations is on your side. I'm sure that Beyonce's not going to come and be like, give me my 99 cents. I'm not going to R-I-A-A jail for this one. I love that you brought up LimeWire. I have not thought about LimeWire in so long. It was so important at the time. Dude, it was so important, especially as a DJ. I was a vinyl guy, but around this period, 2002, 2003, I think I was just starting to always keep a little case logic of CDs by my side. Just in case if a record skipped or something like that, you could just pop in a CD, keep the dance floor going while you figured out what was wrong with your needles or something like that. But yes, I was a LimeWire. LimeWire allowed you to go down the rabbit hole in a time before MP3s were just getting easily downloaded. One forgets that there was a moment when you could just reach in your pocket and listen to every song ever made. Ever made, yes. Way before streaming. Way before MP3 downloading, though. in the sense of going to somebody's blog and downloading it. There wasn't a ton of that. That's before the blog moment. No, we were coming out of Napster. And Napster had gotten famously shut down by the members of Metallica and others. But then LimeWire sort of slid in the back door. Can I tell you my origin of LimeWire? What is your first LimeWire download? My first LimeWire. So I was really into this electronic artist. I think he's Scottish. Named Milo. And he had a song called In My Arms. Impossible to understand in interviews. Level Scottish, yes. I really liked the song In My Arms and I knew that it had a sample and I looked it up and the internet was able to tell me the song but I could not find this I couldn't find it at Amoeba Records I couldn't find it anywhere he had sampled a song called Waiting for a Star to Fall by Boy Meets Girl let's play a second of that I think one of the things that I love about music because sometimes you can take something completely cheesy and turn it into something very, very cool. So this is the song, The Sample. This is In My Arms by Milo. I love how he took those cheesy lyrics, put it on top of a bed of Kim Carnes, Betty Davis' eyes, and then suddenly made a song that was like powering all our fun sort of like electronic pool parties that summer oh it's great and that was one of milo's geniuses like that was kind of his mission statement take something that is just not cool or just something from that forgotten 80s moment forgotten 80s yeah yeah we should do another episode bring it back only about forgotten 80s maybe it'll come on our freestyle episode but like there are there's like a sound from like post madonna prince michael jackson but pre like nirvana that i feel like doesn't get discussed a whole lot we'll do that on a future episode so leading up to crazy and love beyonce had already had a massive career with destiny's child they were one of the biggest girl groups going into the 2000s and she even co-wrote some of their biggest hits we've got survivor independent women part one jump it jump it And Bootylicious. What's cool is that Stevie Nicks actually shows up in the video. So on top of that iconic opening with the sort of like push-in zooms and each person getting their moment to shine, you've got Stevie Nicks in the video. And Stevie Nicks went out of her way to show her support of this burgeoning young star, Beyonce. It wasn't just collecting a check. Because she would have been like 19, right? Beyonce was like 19. She was very young in this. Yeah. 19 or 20. Yeah. So after their album Survivor, Destiny's Child announced that they were going on hiatus for a little bit to focus on their solo projects. In 2002, Beyonce released her very first solo single. And no, it was not Crazy in Love. This blew my mind. Okay. The first solo single by Beyonce is, in fact, the song Work It Out from the Austin Powers movie Goldmember. She, of course, played Foxy Cleopatra in this movie. The track, hold on, this is what kills me. The track was produced by the Neptunes. They had Sheila E on drums. And guys, this song did not even crack the Billboard Hot 100. I cannot believe you had Beyonce. Inauspicious debut. Neptunes. Shocking. Everything. Even a movie to boost. And a movie to boost. Yeah. Let's play Work It Out. I've never heard this song in my life. You haven't? I'm not a fan of that at all. oh i like this a lot of children's toys getting stepped on oh man i like this song a lot and let me just say this i think the reason this did not chart is because they were clearly going for a song in a period piece movie and i don't think black radio much less pop radio beyonce wasn't at that point yet where she can come out with a song that is in terms of genre this much of a throwback i definitely like a 70s yes exploitation kind of vibe is what they were going for or something i mean like i'm sure that clear channel and some of the other big conglomerates had already started purchasing radio at that time yeah so the big you know r&b and rap stations in all your major cities they had a very like they had a much more limited range of what they were playing so you got to imagine this is 2002 like i mean like what's what's being played right now like it's some neptune songs but there wasn't like a whole lot of place on the radio for a song this far out in left field you know what i mean so i think it makes actually sense if you think about where radio was and radio was the primary way that most people are still getting their music yeah in 2002 that this song was just too strange yeah too out there it was it was too much of a throwback and i've said on this show before most of time in uh there have been exceptions but most of the time in black culture and black radio we don't do retro the same way and this song felt very retro it felt very it almost reminds me of that nika kasa song like a feather which was mark ronson's uh i believe first you know major production can i ask you about that when you say not the same way are you saying it's it's it was too retro without an addition of something modern to kind of mix it that often happens like sampling with the drum machine etc etc that kind of thing yes that's what i'm saying i'm saying that like if you think about some of the songs on voodoo like angelo and quest love are going after a sound that is not a radio sound yeah you know so when you listen to black radio at that time like there still very exciting stuff happening right on the edge of both street culture and like brand new music Like so Missy was really big When I think about the fact that to this day, if you go to your city's blues venue, it ain't filled with, like, a whole bunch of Black people, you know what I mean? Like, it's usually, like, a bunch of, like, older white guys playing their favorite Robert Johnson or something like that. But I feel like for most of my lifetime, black music has ferociously charged forward in some direction you can like it or dislike it but it's not concerned with like the blues of the 1950s it's not really overly concerned these days with james brown and you know there's like a little bit of love for stevie wonder because he can just blow his heart out you know he can sing but yeah just black culture doesn't do that the same way it's just different and i would argue that one of the reasons one of the things that kept this song back is the fact that it's so decidedly retro so even though it's got this grade a pedigree of 2002 it's not going to get played on hot 97 this doesn't sound like a song doesn't sound modern enough power 106 yeah it made i think you nailed it i think it's just not modern enough yeah despite having you know this pedigree of artists that's insane so around this time early 2000s beyonce uh and jay-z become something of an item now obviously they're years away from getting married there was also talk about like maybe she likes sean paul maybe she likes this guy there was a lot of speculation yeah um i think it's very on brand for the couple that they became that instead of addressing these rumors head-on they actually released a song together and that song their first collabo was oh three bonnie and clive it's off of jay-z's album blueprint two let's hear a little bit of this song And that chorus, a clear interpolation of this Tupac song. Jesus Christ, man. Do I got to do everything around here? I'm sorry. I said the quiet part loud. Here's what they were interpolating. It's Tupac's Me and My Girlfriend off of his Machiavelli album. Tell me why to the bloody end Just me and my girlfriend Now if you really want to go down a rabbit hole, I just think there was like this very distinct trend, maybe in the 10-year period between 93 and 2003 when Bonnie and Clyde comes out, where people were coming out with songs which were ostensibly about a relationship, but they were always about something. The girl in the song was always something else. So I would say that it starts with Common, and I used to love her. That's why her is H.E.R. And he's really talking about, it's not a girl, it's talking about hip hop. But then Nas did a song where the girl is his gun. He talks about how the gun gets manufactured and it gets shipped to the States and it gets passed off to this kid on the street. And that was a song called I Gave You Power from 96. under car seats they sneak me in clubs been in the hands of mad thugs they feed me when they load me with mad slugs and then in 97 tupac you know posthumously came out with a song called me and my girlfriend where he too talks about his girlfriend but his girlfriend is his gun yeah and then jay-z and beyonce came out with bonnie and cline where just from the very first note the look for me like jay-z says that that's directly tying to the tupac that's how tupac starts his song right and the chorus is a direct interpolation i love it of the tupac song but this is the first time ironically that the girlfriend in the song is actually a woman it's actually beyonce so it has all these layers of meaning kind of came full circle which are there if you if you know about them or look for them but like you can also just enjoy the song on its own us in the hip-hop community we were talking about these things you know i mean and like so it was just like oh snap so now jay-z's keeping it you know he's got another song sort of in that vein but now this time the girl is a woman and add to those layers of meaning the fact that bonnie and clyde is a song oh yeah it's already the sirs gansborg brigitte bardot version which of course is based on the like real life story maybe the movie so there's many many by the way can i just say i would love to do a surge episode he was one of my favorite artists of all time at one point in my life. You know, Histoire de Melody Nelson is one of my favorite albums of all time. Maybe we can squeeze that in at some point. So Dangerously in Love, the record, this would have been Beyonce's debut, was going to come out in 2002, but then Kelly comes out with Dilemma. Oh, yes, the song with Nelly. Absolutely. Absolute hit record. And once this song blew up, then Mr. Knowles, Matthew, Beyonce's father, decided to push the release of her debut a little further in the future to give a little space from the huge hit that was Dilemma. And during these delays, Beyonce continues working on her album. During this time, she meets an up-and-coming producer from Washington, D.C. named Rich Harrison, who I think is one of our unsung heroes. I agree. He is officially now the unsung hero of this episode. Listen, it's not that he's not famous, but like, you know, the he's done songs, you know, the Neptunes and Kanye West and all these names. But I feel like Rich Harrison absolutely needs to be his name in that conversation in the conversation because it should be. I agree. So many good songs for Mary J. Blige, Kelly Rowland. And I feel like he is the reason why we know a Marie, because he has produced so many of my favorite songs by here. Here's one of my all time favorites for the entire decade of music that was the 2000s. This is Why Don't We Fall in Love by a Marie. that song goes so hard i love that song have you heard that song before i didn't know that one that one was smooth great great song it's smooth but it actually hits it hits hard like i love how yeah yeah we're gonna talk more about rich harrison's sparkling production uh in the second half of the show. We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, we're not only going to hear Beyonce Knowles' isolated vocals, we're going to hear the demo. Yes, the demo for Crazy in Love. It's not on YouTube. It's not out there until we are putting it out there, ironically, on YouTube. When we get back, when we get back. Welcome back to One Song. Now we're about to dive into the stems of Crazy in Love, co-written and co-produced by Rich Harrison. From what I understand, Rich already had the beat and was just waiting for the right artist to use it. Luxury, help us break down this beat and what makes it so iconic. All right, let's do it. So we're going to start with the iconic sample, the source of the sample. There are two samples, but they're both from the same song. Okay. So let's listen to both of them. The source is the song by the Shy Lights called Are You My Woman? Parentheses, Tell Me So from 1970 Brunswick Records. and the record label is relevant. We'll get to that in a little bit. First of all, here's the song. I'll play it from the beginning and you'll hear both of the samples. Here it comes. Loop one, these two bars right here. And that's loop two right here. Those two bars. And that's the song. That is so cool. I love this. This is a part of sampling that I love. Hey, don't tell me it's not an art. That song has been around for decades before Rich comes across it and loops it and turns into one of the biggest singles of all time. But also, I love all the live instrumentation, all the drums, all that's happening musically there. So I'm going to quote-unquote recreate the sample, but I'll basically show you how Rich Harrison flipped it. So he started with that first loop, those first two bars I pointed out. The original song is at 113 BPM, and it's in C major, but he pitches it down a whole step, two half steps, and he drops down the tempo about 14 BPM. Let's see how that happened. So here's that first loop. So he took that, pitched it down to. So that now sounds like this. And I can be guilty of like, OK, all pitches are even like all the keys are a little bit, but they're not. And like deep musicians will even go to the mat for like, you know, well, spinal tap. D minor is the saddest key. there's something to that because there's a difference in how those songs sound i i i really agree with this just at different key in different keys you know and i'm not a person as as listeners of the show know who can talk in terms of like g you know and a major and all that like i can't i look it's a it's a sore i'm sad about it i'm d minor about where i am don't be minor keys but what i will say is what i will say is i think you're sharp thank you sir i think that like whenever I do go look and see like a bunch of songs that I like, certain keys pop up way more than others. And I'm not even talking about like songs that make me happy. I'm talking about songs I think sound good. Yeah, it's not just the tonality, although that is a part of it. Now let's shift the tempo in addition to the pitch. We're going to go from 113 BPM to roughly 99 BPM. I really want to emphasize I only did two things, but the transformation was dramatic. here's the original again the energy is so much more vibrant it's a parade and there's a little bit of it's a little darker slowed down and pitched down and it hits harder and I haven't even added what Rich added we'll do that in just a moment I just want to weigh in real quick and say as a DJ when this song came out one of the things that made it stand out we were still pretty close to the 90s most of your favorite hip hop songs from the 90s range from anywhere as absolutely slow is like 82, 84. And then the fastest songs, I'd say, were usually like 94, 95. The fact that this song came in at 99, it was actually faster. It was pretty fast. It actually kind of started to break a certain barrier, a BPM barrier, if you will, in hip-hop that said, oh, you can still come in at 99. Jay-Z, who was actually known for a faster style of rapping at the very beginning of his career, is rapping faster here than he is on something like, let's say, Dead Presidents or something like that. Like it's kind of breaking some barriers just in a pure technical what's acceptable in hip hop sense. So it's important to like point out a couple of things about what we just heard. So the Shy Lights are a four piece vocal group out of Chicago with hits. I mean, the Shy Lights have hits. Let's play. Probably their biggest hit is from 1972. This is Oh Girl. I love the shylights. I did not realize this. They were essentially the singers of the group. And we know very little about the musicians who actually play on this track. That's important. We're going to go back to we have many episodes where we talk about how what you're hearing in the song is often disconnected to who's in the credits, who's credited and frankly, who gets paid. So that's why it's relevant to bring back our old friends of the show, Sample Phantoms and Credit Ghosts, two expressions that I have coined to label this phenomenon. And we'll be in my forthcoming book on Oxford University Press being released this summer, How to Steal Music. Preorder your copy. Not yet. The question of who performed the music we just heard is one of my biggest failings on this show. And I'm going to ask the One Song Nation for help on this. I'm going to tell you what I found. We're going to talk about it. And if you know anything more about the horn players you just heard, the bass player you just heard, and the drummer you heard, we'd love to hear about it. It's almost like the record label has suppressed this information. I mean, like we should say Brunswick has sort of a shady past. Like they got wrapped up in like the Paola case in 1975. Let's talk about that. So Brunswick Records is sort of a pre-Motown Motown in that they had sessions. Oh, they were around in the 1920s. They've been around forever. Forever, right. They have a long story history. Go check out their website for their own accounting of the label's history includes this. But not their accounting. They don't publish that. That's also there. But their own website says, quote, working at Brunswick's New York office in the 70s was surreal. Promotion meetings would talk about determining how much cash, TVs and stereos were needed to break a record. To be clear to you, younger viewers, they're not literally breaking a record. Breaking a record was to promote and to sell a record. Using payola in this case. Using cash. visitors would include baseball players actors mobsters young reverend al sharpton and you might walk into the office of the president to find him smoking a joint with soupy sales or louie armstrong well the payola thing is relevant because they were the target of a nixon justice department investigation federal agents raided the office this is the history of this record label and besides being like an amusing story of like you know ne'er-do-wells of you know music business ne'er-do-wells it's relevant because we simply don't know the names of who those musicians are they're not listed on the album they're not listed on the website my deepest of deep dives all across discogs and everything led to not a single name so i'll play the horn loop again without the beats that rich harrison added and then i'll throw them in so you can hear what that does to the loop with the beats that snare makes it more driving such a difference and you know all this time that I been living with this song i thought that he had maybe added like you know an actual bass guitar or something in there because i think just by adding that 808 yeah i hear more bass there than in just the sample itself i believe there's some bass added as well okay i don't know if you played it might be an actual i was gonna ask you do you think there are any live instruments that rich has added here or is it just sample and maybe it's very possible because i know he has the skills i know that He is a player of instruments. Maybe even keyboard bass might be happening there. There's also just in the original sample, though, that eighth note, dun, dun, dun, that throbbing bass line is in there. Here's the sample by itself again, just as a reminder. But I think he, to your point before, of combining the old and the new. I think the addition of both what we heard, which is an 808 kick, another kick from an unknown sample source, and what sounds like it could be an 808 snare. I'm not really sure. But those drum machine and sampled beats on top of the original loop make it sound really modern, at least to my ear. I'll just play that beat again and then I'll add the sample. So that's a super modern MPC sounding beat. And that little glissando at the end is so key. Yeah, absolutely. Got to know who these guys are. They glissandoed, they stabbed, they did all this valuable work in the horn section to give us that hook, that hooky hook. Okay, now let's play that second loop. It sounded like this originally. I love that. We don't have enough of that anymore. We should bring that back. Bring back the Bowser kind of like. This guy with a really deep voice. Yeah. So that percussion loop was pitched down two half steps, a whole step like this. Doesn't sound that much different. But then when you shift the BPM, drop the tempo about 14 BPM, we get this. And by the way, let's not forget that stab at the very beginning. Super crucial. Those horn players did a lot of work on this tune, right? so those are the two sample chops from the same song and we heard that they are in sequence and that forms the bedrock of the tune now this part is really interesting because in the original the timekeeping is a little it's really funky and it's really syncopated listen to that kick it's a syncopated 16th note 2e and but it doesn't have that it's very dancer friendly I can see like it's very kind of Latin it's got a little bit of a like salsa groove or something like that I also see like belly dancers I feel like I'm being seduced by the rhythm there's a wiggle, it's got a wiggle to it so what he added to that I'll just play for you the beats that Rich Harrison added by the way that whistle is really buried but you hear it kind of pop up a little bit is that from him it's in his tracks and i think it actually might be a simpty code it might be simpty i'm not actually sure what the origin of that whistle is rich harrison famously hard to find on he's not on instagram there's not a lot of interviews with him he seems like that kind of guy you know a little elusive on the explanation and i love the drums on this song I think I hear a little bit of a Go-Go influence, a little bit of a DC influence, not in terms of even how the music is played, but just how it ultimately comes across. When you go to DC, some of the foundation of Go-Go was people going to DC and there'd be kids beating on those empty paint buckets. And so that idea of like a lot of percussion, this is almost like the opposite of what the Neptunes are doing right now because their stuff is so stripped down and minimalist in its perfectly perfected way. But what Rich is doing feels more like it could be a little bit of 808, but a whole bunch of those kids being on those paint buckets. You know what I mean? That was my first thought when I heard this. And so many of his other really big songs, they always have really active percussion all over the place. Yes. To drive the point home about what Rich's production did, as much as what we're hearing is super simple here. Boom. Right? remember that this percussion loop originally had this like where's the one kind of feeling it's not driving you it's not giving you a downbeat and a backbeat in a very explicit way i would say so by adding that it adds up to this boom boom that's him now we're going one two can't pitch a theory i think he thinks that that stab that you mentioned earlier is doing the work that stab is on the one yeah that's what's going to carry you through not just four but eight bars i think that's right i think you're right yeah that's like the one the james brown one yeah that's very james brown the one because once you have that locked in you can get kind of loose and maybe float around a bit but then if you get a little bit lost at the end of the two bar loop we're going to get you right back home with that stab so this is a story that i love so apparently like rich had been holding on to this beat for just the right artist and when beyonce was like hey Let's have a meeting. Like he was like, yes, okay, this is it. This is the artist that I want. And, you know, sometimes it happens with us creatives. You get so happy that like, you know, this dream collaboration is coming. You celebrate too soon. He went out and he went freaking hard. He decides he's going to go out. He's going to have a great time. He went a little too far and he shows up the next day late and hung over. So he's not really pleasing the queen in his presence. rich plays the beat that uh we just heard and she's not totally sold yet she wasn't completely sold so she tells him she's going to step out real quick and basically grab a birthday gift for kelly kelly roll and when she comes back she says she wants to hear what else he has exactly and importantly before she steps out interestingly and importantly she happens to look in the mirror and says to herself and rich in the room man i am looking real crazy right now so then she leaves the room rich sits down he's got two hours with his beat and he's got to come up with something for her to love in two hours and this is the demo he puts together that's rich that's rich that's rich harrison with the hook and here's verse one When you leave, I'm better you not go. Call your name two, three times. Woo! Come on, Rich! I'm going to cut to the chorus. Wow, he came up with all that. And then he came up with this. And this. That's all he did. Nothing much. Genius! What a freaking monster. Yeah. That is insane, man. He's a beat maker. He's a songwriter. he's a singer just he does it all as a friend of mine would say just stop that's dumb yeah that is hella dumb bro that's so good yeah it's all there minus the bridge which is majorly important and we will be talking about and giving shine to in a minute there's no jay-z verse but the song crazy in love was ready for beyonce when she came back so much respect yeah you can you can come up with that much of the song especially under pressure like you know people don't understand that studio time costs money. The artist sometimes doesn't have a whole lot of, sometimes they don't have focus. Sometimes I don't have a lot of time. The fact that under pressure, he was able to come up with that much. And then for Beyonce to use her genius to then translate it, you know, and to put it into the, to add layers and, and sections that didn't exist from that. So dope. Drum roll, please. And now we are giving you Miss Beyonce Knowles' isolated vocals. I really like something I didn't really notice before Which is that after she says something like I look and stare so deep in your eyes And then like second say is like You know what I mean? And then like time But like it's not like a typical like time time Like it's like it comes well into the next line of the lyrics That's pretty fun Yeah rich harrison i i would have never thought that he would have supplied the uh-ohs you know maybe everything else in the song but not the uh-ohs that might have been my biggest surprise too yeah i think that rich harrison not just the lyrics not just the melody not just the verse and chorus but also the hook the uh-oh hook that was pretty major revelation to hear that in the demo there let's hear those uh-ohs I love that this chorus came about in the organic matter that everything from Rehab by Amy Winehouse to like so many of these songs, they just start with a conversation. Totally. Control, Janet Jackson. Let's hear the iconic chorus of Grazy in Love. Grazy right now. It's a touch. And that three-part harmony wasn't in the original. No. Is that all? We can assume that's all Beyonce, right? That sounds like three Beyonce's, maybe 12 Beyonce's stacked up. It's beautiful harmony, like chilling. I think my favorite new line in the entire song is, got me hoping you'll page me right now, which I don't think the kids, they're like, what does that mean? look it up sky tell so beyonce is not the only vocalist on this song yeah jay-z also on the song i love the story about how he got into the song at the 11th hour like you know they wanted him on the song he comes he he records this whole thing in like 10 minutes and leaves yeah but i think it's one of the most memorable and one of the most memorized jay-z verses of all time let's hear jay-z on crazy love star like ringo war like a green bull red crazy bring your whole set jay-z in the range crazy in the range they can't figure them out they like they're insane i'm just gonna pause there because there's some wonderful i'd never noticed until i heard it in the stems yeah but in that little section we actually hear beyonce singing along with the horns that come in in that moment oh i didn't hear that i never noticed that but now you'll never unhear it again here it is oh oh oh oh so so destiny's child wow i would i didn't hear that part before i never noticed it but now you'll never unhear it when you listen to the regular song it's in there i'll tell you what i'll never uh be able to unhear is just the degree to which jay-z's flow this is why it's impossible people think they can get up a karaoke nice and do empire state of mine but you can't because he's so on and off the flow so much like the tony soprano the rock handle like van exel like that stuff is not like a typical sort of like on the bar rhyme scheme like it's it's very on and off the rhythm in a way that i feel like only jay-z can do he said in the past he wanted to do with rap what sinatra done with singing which was not really focused on like singing in the traditional way but swinging it swinging it swinging it the whole way through I also like how he says barrette to make it rhyme with bring your whole set. And by the way, I have so much respect for Jay-Z's verse when you actually hear it isolated and you realize all the intricate sort of like singapation he's doing lyrically through this verse. It did not have to be this good. He clearly cared about delivering like an amazing feature. All right. It's time to get to the bridge. And I think, you know, Beyonce's got some killer bridges. This is one of the most insane bridges in a good way of all time. Yeah, let's talk about Beyonce and her bridges, because this is where she, in a lot of songs, tends to just sort of take it to a really new place and do some of her most incredible work, both vocally, but also like strange things happen with arrangements. We get extra bars. We get dropouts in the harmony. It just goes to a new place. It's almost like another song is in there briefly in the middle of this other incredible song. I can't agree more. This song is not only no exception, it's neck and neck. Fight me for which song is the best Beyonce bridge. It's either this one or single ladies. Let's listen and fight in the room afterwards, as I don't know what the right answer is. And I left out the part where we then transition into this like crazy over the top ad lib. right now you're lost i'm looking so crazy right now you're crazy oh that's the note that's the note that's the note that where i pointed to you that's my favorite note that's your favorite yeah because she's like you know so crazy like she goes she goes she starts going minor while her you know beyonce backup singers there's no doubting that rich harrison wrote a lot of what this song is as a song and maybe in arguably the bulk of all of these hooks the melodies the lyrics and Beyonce. It's a yes and situation. And Beyonce comes in, gives a killer performance, murders it based on what's on paper, so to speak, and then adds to it. What's so interesting about the bridge there is like, as she does with so many songs, like in Single Ladies, it's not your typical eight bar, middle eight bridge. It's like 12 bars. This song it 10 bars long And that really part of what makes the magic happen because the added two bars your brain you heard so many songs with bridges that are eight bars that it like where is she going? You get wonderfully lost. I think she takes it in these directions that are unexpected melodically. And the tension that's built by extending it and added two bars is part of the magic. It all comes together in this really special way that makes this neck and neck for my favorite bridge with Single Ladies. You left out Deja Vu is another Beyonce song with an outstanding bridge. So is that our fight me? I'm going Single Ladies, you're going Deja Vu? No, you know what? I'm actually going to say, I'm going to go the Rich Harrison round and say, I think that the bridge that everybody in the world is sleeping on is actually one of the bridges that he did for amory uh let's play the bridge from talking about all right so rich harrison is 37.5 percent of the 100 publishing pie ms knolls is herself 7.5 percent. Mr. Carter, Jay-Z gets five percent. And half of the publishing on Crazy in Love goes to Eugene Record from the Chi-Lights, 50 percent of the publishing. Can I just say a part of me is really happy about that, because usually I feel like, you know, these these old black musicians and singers don't get a big piece of the pie. So I'm actually happy that happened here. We love it when black musicians get paid, but none of the musicians we heard, all of the sample phantoms are not getting paid. And this is not only a sample phantom situation. It's also what I call credit ghosts because Eugene Rucker is in the credits, but he's not in the song. He's the sole songwriter of the original Shy Light song. Therefore, he's the only one in the credits in the Beyonce song, Crazy in Love. But you'll notice you're not hearing any vocals. You're not hearing any singing. So there's a big disconnect between what you're hearing, who's credited, who's being paid. It's one of these things that's a real problem. We haven't quite fixed with copyright and publishing to to his credit and we know that he's a singer not necessarily the musician but i would think that he probably wrote the song and then worked with them i mean this is one of the things that we don't know this is where we have a disagreement i mean across a lot of episodes like he probably wrote the song but like there's the way copyright works and publishing works it doesn't strike me it doesn't i think strike the average listener as being like logical that as the songwriter all the money that comes from this song sampling would go to a record label and an individual, neither of whom are what you're hearing. Well, I think it's probably safe to say we don't know if he wrote the song and gave it to these musicians or if they, you know, sort of came up with the song themselves. The fact is, we don't know. The strong likelihood is that he wrote a lot of it and that the musicians tend to come up with parts that are based on loosely on something that was quote unquote written. Is there anything that says this song was produced by or arranged by so the only credits beyond eugene record on the song and they're not part of the publishing they didn't get paid beyond the session fee would have been willie henderson maybe who's credited as director and i'm glad you asked because there's this mysterious second credit which is arranged by eugene record and quote the people's paraphernalia which is a credit that i found the least i've ever found on a google search in my whole life yeah was the people's paraphernalia what does that refer to is that a group of people is that a joke that they had that day who knows knowing just about as little as you do i would argue that it sounds like eugene because i was wondering like who got the arranged by credit it sounds like he was at least at the very least leading these session musicians in a certain musical direction so i don't think it's i don't think it's bad that eugene is getting this credit no you know but it would be great to know who those musicians were yeah and what their contributions were. I think it's really important to speak up for session musicians who are generally speaking. They work from gig to gig. They get a flat session fee. It's usually not a lot of money. There's a lot of pride in the work being like, first call, they call me. But the contributions of session musicians frequently cross the line into what would be, by any objective measure, songwriting contributions. But we consider songwriting in copyright law in America, especially to be just the lyrics and just the melody yeah so by that definition eugene record is a songwriter but you are hearing none of the lyrics there are no lyrics that's where you're losing me though because you're saying he's the songwriter that's more than just lyrics though but in my experience session musicians make contributions that are unpaid and uncredited and that to me is unfair oh no no i totally get it yeah like i think we might be discussing two slightly different things i'm saying that i think there are times when there's one guy you know on a song with you know eight instruments and he told each instrument hey you play this and you play this and you play this and it's very like almost like to a wes anderson degree he's telling them what to do and how to do it in which case you know i i don't love the you know flat fee for the day but it does kind of make sense versus sometimes i think they come in and there's like you said a very fluid line between what you're asked to play and what you're actually contributing, which may definitely cross into a situation where they deserve some splits. But I also think what you're saying, which I 100% agree with, is that the copyright laws haven't kept up with that. And so when you sample a guitar off of a song where the songwriter didn't even come up with that guitar lick, it doesn't keep up with that kind of sampling. And on that, we're 100% aligned. Yeah, so these guys basically are all sample phantoms to the nth degree, because sometimes our sample phantoms, the performers who are in the sound that is used in the sample but not in the publishing, sometimes those guys, we know their names, we don't even know their names. They're sample phantom phantoms. I want to reiterate to the One Song Nation, if you know who played with the People's Paraphernalia or just with the Shy Lights around this period, we'd love to know. I'm sure someone out there knows. Maybe Rich Harrison. And I'll give you a starting point, by the way, for those sleuths. In the YouTube clip of Oh Girl, there is a band behind them. If anyone wants to slow that down and try to identify, because there's horn players, conga players, those are probably the guys. No idea who they are. Would love your ideas. So after this song, Rich Harrison blew the fuck up. He went on to write and produce Amory's One Thing. It's just one thing that got me tripping. It's just one thing that got me tripping. And Jennifer Lopez's Get Right. We want to sign up, we can get right. So originally, Get Right was actually a song called Ride, and it was actually written and recorded with Usher, but it didn't make the cut for Usher's album. Harrison reworded it for J-Lo, but let's hear a little bit of this. I know this is my first time hearing it. Let's hear a little bit of Usher's Ride. That's rich. That's rich. He has a sort of motif, a rhythmic cadence that he likes to use. a lot of times, yeah? Sounds familiar, sounds a little bit like Crazy in Love, to be explicit. No, I totally agree. But can I say something also on the behalf of Rich Harrison? I'm sure at the time some of us were like, oh, Rich Harrison, he kind of does the same kind of beat every time. But sometimes that's what we want. That's what we want to hear. The first time, we liked it the second time. It reminds me of the dance producer, Todd Edwards. All of Todd Edwards' remixes sound very similar in their composition. But it sounds great. It always works. So it's like, I want to hear more Todd Edwards and I want to hear more Rich Harrison. Rich, if you're listening, hit us up, man. DM us. We'd love to do one of your other songs. So Diallo, what do you think the legacy of Crazy in Love is? I mean, the legacy of this song and the music video, it's so pronounced. I do feel like it ushered in a brand new era of R&B star for which she still reigns on top. You know, despite despite a couple of years where I think maybe Rihanna like pushed ahead, like to this day, like Beyonce is just it's an event. Whenever she comes out and performs, it's an event. And it all started with that strut. I'll never forget that classic moment in the video where she comes walking out. I just saw this new Charlie XCX song. I think she's actually just in the video. The song is by an artist named A.G. Cook. But the song is called Residue. At the very beginning, she's in downtown LA, and she walks out doing the strut. And I feel like she just taught a whole generation of this is how you do R&B, singer, pop diva. And it's the way that only I can do it, but this is how I do it. And this is going to be sort of for that generation what Michael Jackson's Motown 25 performance was. If we have time, I'd love to show the audience just a clip of that famous music video. luxury what do you think the legacy of crazy and love i completely agree crazy and love is the beginning of beyonce next level where she goes from being already a superstar with destiny's child and in the group format to a solo mega mega global like forever superstar universe the entire milky way the galaxy yeah the brand all of that and uh i don't know i was just i was re-watching homecoming the other day, which is one of the greatest music movies of all time. Her Coachella performance in 2018, it's not for nothing that she starts the show with Crazy in Love. It's her signature tune. Probably always will be. It'll be on her tombstone. Hopefully that'll be in 70, 80 years. But what an incredible song. Let's listen to a little bit of that Coachella performance. there's one more part of the crazy love legacy that i don't think you quite realize what what is that is beyonce here ladies and gentlemen no but when i first started uh watching your videos on tiktok this was probably the first time i saw one of your tiktok videos Looking so crazy, you love. It's got me looking, got me looking so crazy, you love. And, yeah, this is a couple of years back. And I remember thinking, ah, this guy's really good. I hope that I get to work with him one day. No, that's so sweet. And lo and behold, here we are years later. Here we are. And it ends after this episode. I'm just kidding. No, it doesn't end after this episode. Stay tuned. Okay, Luxury, it's time for one more song. This is the segment where we share a deep cut or a hidden gem with you, the One Song Nation, and with each other. Luxury, you go first. All right, well, I'm going to break one eye rules, which is that the T-shirts I wear, which are different every week, have no correlation to anything we ever do on the show. Today, I'm actually going to play a song from the band Television Personalities, whose shirt I am currently wearing. And by the way, yes, it does mention the Beatles with a picture of Brian Jones from the Rolling Stones. This is a great kind of lesser-known post-punk band. The song is called Part-Time Punks. I think it's a shabby. I think it's a shabby. I think it's a shabby. I think it's a shabby. Sweetly, naively lo-fi. Longtime L.A. denizens will recognize part-time punks. That's a party that's been at the Echo for many years. And I do believe this is where it gets its title. What about you, Diallo? What about your one more song for the week? I am a big fan of a lot of the sort of neo-UK garage that's coming out these days because I just love the general sound. And here's one by P. Rallel. I think I call him parallel, but it's spelled like P-Rallel. And Sam Dealey, this is a song called Blessings. Speaking of Todd Edwards, this is very Todd Edwards-y. That's like, what is that, 132 BPM? Dude, you nailed it. It is 132. I like that we're picking up the pace, so to speak, again. Yeah, that felt like 132. I love Garage because it sounds cool. And for some of us who remember Craig David and Artful Dodger, the fact that people are doing new versions of that over there, I say let's bring it over here. Let's make L.A. Garage. Listen, we've been talking about Todd Edwards. It's the second Todd Edwards mentioned on the show. I heard a lot of Todd Edwards in that, one of the godfathers of U.K. Garage, but he lives in L.A. He's from New Jersey. He's from New Jersey. I really like Todd Edwards. We gotta find another where we can spin some Todd Edwards Todd we're coming for you As always if you have an idea for one song You can find us on Instagram and TikTok You can find me on Instagram at Diallo D-I-A-L-L-O And on TikTok at Diallo Riddle You can find me on Instagram at L-U-X-X-U-R-Y And on TikTok at LuxuryXX You can follow our podcast on Instagram and TikTok At OneSongPodcast For exclusive content You can also watch full episodes of OneSong on YouTube Just search for OneSongPodcast We'd love it if you'd like and subscribe And be sure to check out the One Song Spotify playlist for all the songs we discuss in our episodes. You can find the link in our episode description. And if you've made it this far, well, damn it, you're part of the One Song Nation. Show us some love, give us five stars, leave a review, keep them two-star reviews to yourself, and send this episode to a fellow music fan. It really helps keep the show going. All right, Luxury, help me in this thing. I'm producer, DJ, songwriter, musicologist, and every Friday night from 10 p.m. till midnight, KCRW DJ Luxury. Luxury. And I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ, Diallo Riddle. This is one song. We will see you next time. This episode is produced by Melissa Duanez. Our video editor is Casey Simonson. Mixing by Michael Harmon and engineering by Eric Hicks. This show is executive produced by Kevin Hart, Mike Stein, Brian Smiley, Eric Eddings, Eric Weil, and Leslie Guam.