Usher had a collaboration planned with his friend Beyonce, which never saw the light of the day the way he pictured it to.
The rapper’s record producer, Adonis Shropshire, sat down for a new interview at the Storytelling with Dominique Renee podcast, and shared how the 2004 single, My Boo, came about.
“I got a call at midnight. Jermaine Dupri’s like, ‘Yo, come to the studio.’ He got this beat. And he’s like ‘Write to this one’. It’s all he had. And he already had the melody for the beginning [“There’s always that…”]. He already had that. But he don’t have the words,” Shropshire told the host.
However, after they finished the song and it was time for Usher to have a listen, “He hates it. Hates it. He told us, whatever y’all do, don’t ever play that for me again. So at 4:30 in the morning, Usher gets in the booth. I’m like, ‘I’ve never seen nothing like this in my life.’ I’m thinking, ‘Do it tomorrow.’ He did it right then.”
Although the OMG hitmaker had warmed up to the song by that time, Beyonce, who was supposed to be on the duet for the female vocals, backed out by that point.
Queen Bey, the producer added, was on a tour at that time, so they reached out to Alicia Keys to cover her part. Things did not go as planned but Keys and Usher both stayed on number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for eight weeks straight.
Usher and Beyonce ended up collaborating four years after My Boo, on another song, Love In This Club, Pt. II.
