Swizz Beatz - I finally got the opportunity to work with him on the Beyonce's "B'Day". His work ethic is unmatched. (Only matched by Beyonce's work ethic from what I've seen).
Beyonce mentioned you in a recent interview on MTV, and said that you were one of the women who inspired her while working on her album "B'Day". How did that make you feel? And did you enjoy working with her?
Well Beyonce has been mentioning me in a lot of interviews and it makes me feel incredible. The first time I heard her mention me on an interview I was driving and I was so shocked to hear her say my name on the radio I almost crashed. I couldn't believe it. She such an inspiration to me from her music, to her drive to everything she's achieved as a young black woman. It blows me away to think any lil thing about me would inspire her. It's an honor. We had a ball in the studio working on her album. It was like a 3 wk slumber party for real. I think we all enjoyed each others company. I grew close with not only her but her cousin and sister who also wrote with us on the album. That's the most fun I've ever had working with an artist.
http://monicamania.blogdrive.com/archive/1614.html
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BallerStatus.com: Out of all the people you just mentioned, which was the most enjoyable experience?
Makeba Riddick: I've enjoyed working with all the artists that I've worked with. I think working on the B-Day album, it was so much fun. It was like a slumber party. Everyday it was like a party up in that piece, and it wasn't a lot of us. It was her (Beyonce) team that she wanted to work with, ultimately, and closely with. We had a ball. Like when you hear Beyonce, you think about the biggest artist alive of our generation, but it didn't feel like "I'm coming to work with Beyonce." It was just a lot of fun.
BallerStatus.com: You would think somebody of her stature would have such a huge ego.
Makeba Riddick: Oh my goodness. I think that's why we were able to come up with the fun records that we did because she was so cool. I mean, at the end of the day, all these artists are regular people. She's a regular girl just like me, you, or anybody else. Like her sister, her cousin, and anybody else. That's who came in the studio everyday. It wasn't Beyonce, the "superstar." It was Beyonce the girl who has feelings, who gets happy, excited, mad, and disappointed. So all of that came out in writing those records.
http://www.ballerstatus.com/2009/03/09/makeba-riddick-songwriter-extraordinaire/
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We worked together every day, pulling 14-hour days," Riddick says of the recording process. "I see the reason why she is the biggest artist of our generation: Her work ethic is unlike anything I've ever seen. She would tell us to be there at 11 o'clock in the morning and we would be there until, like, four or five in the morning. But she would be there before 11 a.m. When we got there, she was already there, working.
"Her concepts were so incredible," Riddick continues. "I never saw an artist have so much of her own vision and know exactly what they want to say. She would say, 'I have this crazy idea for this song, check out this situation.' We would be talking, bugging out — three hours later, then comes the song."
"She had multiple producers in Sony Studios," Riddick adds. "She booked out the whole studio and she had the biggest and best producers in there. She would have us in one room, we would start collaborating with one producer, then she would go and start something else with another producer. We would bounce around to the different rooms and work with the different producers. It was definitely a factory type of process."
http://www.mtv.com/bands/b/beyonce/news_feature_081406/index2.jhtml
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AHHA: When you sit down to collaborate with an artist, what is the first question you ask?
Makeba: Every situation is different. Sometimes I have a track and I write a song and just send it to a label. Other times, the artist and I sit down together and write. Somebody like Beyonce, because she knows exactly what she wants, it's not hard. We can be talking about a situation she's in and it’s really like talking because it's a real situation, and through that it'll just evolve into a song.
http://www.realrnb.com/forum/archive/index.php?t-12488.html
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Composing a song can be an intensely personal experience, Riddick said, and for a songwriting partnership to work, the artist has to feel comfortable with her. She likes to spend a day or two just hanging out with a musician before talking shop. Usually, Riddick will know right away if it's going to work or not. She and Beyonce hit it off immediately.
"I've never had more fun working with an artist," said Riddick, who now lives in Los Angeles. "It was like being 10 years old again. We were in the studio dancing, watching videos, having girl talk for hours until the early, early morning. It was awesome. Before we knew it, three weeks had gone by, and we had finished the album."
Released in 2006, Beyonce's "B'Day" debuted at No. 1 and went triple platinum. Riddick co-wrote the album's lead single, "Déjà Vu," as well as about a half-dozen other tracks.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/bs-ae-makeba-riddick-20100516,0,5677588.story
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“Once again I’m like ‘really,’ ” she says laughing. “I didn’t believe it until I was walking in the door to meet her, and that’s when I started getting nervous. I came in the room and from the minute we shook hands it was like we were distant cousins. Like we had known each other in a past life or something because we clicked. I’ve never clicked with an artist the way we did. Same with Rihanna, which was more like a big sister, little sister [relationship]. With Beyonce we were closer in age. We just had a ball and before I knew it three weeks had gone by and the album was done.”
The track, “Deja Vu,” was picked as the first single, and scored Riddick another No. 1 single. Of the 10 tracks on the original album released in 2006, Riddick had her hand in writing half, including singles “Upgrade U” and “Get Me Bodied,” rightfully earning her the nickname of “Golden Girl.”
“It was crazy to me when we were done. That was a whirlwind,” Riddick says. “Every day we would be talking for hours -- that’s how those songs came about. It was fun, that’s how you should make an album. It amazes me how a regular girl from Baltimore from the inner city has the same life experiences as a girl from Houston, Texas. You forget that she’s Beyonce until a L’Oreal commercial comes on.”
source: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2010/07/makeba-riddick-beyonc%C3%A9-and-rihannas-golden-girl.html
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Clutch: I know you must get this question all the time, but I’m sure our Clutchettes want to know what it’s like working with Beyonce.
Makeba: I must honestly say that working with her is like being in the studio with one of my home girls I grew up with or working with a distant cousin. From the moment we first shook hands I knew that it was going to work out well. We always have a ball in the studio.
Clutch: On Beyonce’s latest CD, I Am… Sasha Fierce, there’s a song you co-wrote called “Ave Maria”. I think this song is so beautiful and different from anything I’ve ever heard Beyonce perform. What was the inspiration behind the creation of this song?
Makeba: I used to go to Catholic school and I always heard the song but never knew what it meant. When B (Beyonce), some friends of ours from London and I were hanging out in the studio, one of the girls stated she had come down the aisle on her wedding day to that particular song. The song is over 800 years old and about a girl who knows what it means to lose love and have her heart broken, but thank God, love has now found me, Ave Maria. I was so touched and inspired by this meaning. There are so many people out there waiting for their Ave Maria moment and I thought it could be a powerful song.
http://www.clutchmagonline.com/2009/01/makeba-riddick-soul-chile/
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Did things start to open up after you had that first hit?
Well, I was pretty young then, and I didn't know too much about samples and the lawsuits that could come from using them. There was a huge sample in "All I Have" and the label failed to clear the sample before the song was on the radio. The original writers and producers sued the label, Jennifer, her publishing company, and my publisher for 90 percent of the publishing. Because of the lawsuit, I got a very small percentage for that song.
But I continued. After the hit, EMI, my publisher, was flying me all over the world to work with producers in Sweden, Germany, London. I decided to move to L.A. I had been working a lot but would get only a cut here and there. I really didn't have any money. I was sitting on my bed one day wondering where my career was going when Max Gousse called me out of the blue. He had left Epic and was working for Matthew Knowles, Beyoncé's father, at Music World Entertainment. He told me . . . Beyoncé wanted to cut a song I had written with Rodney Jerkins about a year and a half earlier . Max said that Beyoncé wanted to meet me and write with me. She flew me to New York, and even as I was walking up to the door of the studio, I was thinking, "This isn't really happening, I'm going to wake up any minute."
I walked into the studio and met Beyoncé and her family. She was working on her B'Day album, had handpicked the producers and writers, and I was one of the writers. I cowrote seven songs with her and the other writers. We finished the album in three weeks and had so much fun doing it.
"Déjà Vu" was the song that got me in the door. It became the first single and was a number-one hit all around the world. The B'Day album also went to number one, and two other singles I had cowritten made it to the top five. It was amazing to finally see some A-list material coming out and to start making some money.
When you write with an artist, is there a different dynamic?
There is a lot more leeway in that situation, because the artist is the one who will have to sing the song every night. So I'll ask them what they are thinking about, what they are going through. In Beyoncé's case, we're both girls and not too far apart in age. Sometimes we've been going through the same things and share a lot in common. Beyoncé and I would spend hours talking, and some of those thoughts would turn into songs.
http://www.berklee.edu/bt/224/coverstory.html
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HB: Out of all the people you’ve worked with, who was your favorite?
I have fun with all the artists I work with.
Working with Beyonce is like writing songs at a slumber party with your cousin or at a family reunion while making up dance routines and having girl talk for hours. (Beyond Fun)
http://hellobeautiful.com/2010/03/11/spotlight-singersongwriter-makeba-riddick/
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Makeba: Every situation is different. Sometimes I have a track and I write a
song and just send it to a label. Other times, the artist and I sit down together and write. Somebody like Beyonce, because she knows exactly what she wants, it’s not hard. We can be talking about a situation she’s in and its really like talking because it’s a real situation, and through that it’ll just evolve into a song.
http://allhiphop.com/2006/10/25/makeba-riddick-tried-and-true/