B-More's Own Ms Makeba Doing Big Things

Baltimore's Own Makeba Riddick spoke to MTV about her experience in working with Beyonce Knowles on her second album B-Day.

Two women in particular were very instrumental in helping Beyoncé bring structure to B'Day. Along with hit-songwriter Sean Garrett (Mary J. Blige, Usher, Britney Spears), Knowles enlisted her cousin Angela Beyince and up-and-coming songwriter Makeba Riddick, who actually made her way onto the team after writing first single "Deja Vu." The song's producer, Rodney Jerkins, had demoed the record with Makeba singing the lyrics and slid it to Beyoncé, who approved."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.

"I see the reason why she is the biggest artist of our generation: Her work ethic is unlike anything I've ever seen."
"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."While Riddick and the B-team worked out the words, different producers, from the Neptunes to Rodney Jerkins to Swizz Beatz, were simultaneously cooking up the tracks.

"I see the reason why she is the biggest artist of our generation: Her work ethic is unlike anything I've ever seen." - Makeba Riddick"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."

To read the full story click here: http://www.mtv.com/bands/b/beyonce/news_feature_081406/index2.jhtml