Rae Sremmurd’s Swae Lee Came Up With Beyonce’s “Formation” Concept



By 2013, Mike Will could work with anyone he wanted to. And he has, pretty much. Pharrell Williams got back some of the street vibe of his early Skateboard P days through a collaboration with Mike Will: “Move That Dope,” from 2014. The seed that became Beyoncé’s “Formation” was planted by Swae Lee, one of the Rae Sremmurd duo, and A Pluss, one of Ear Drummer’s staff producers, who has been a friend of Will’s since high school. A Pluss had started the beat back in Atlanta, and Will had it with him on his phone when he was driving from L.A. to the Coachella music festival with Lee and his brother, in 2014.

“So we’re in the middle of the desert,” Will explained. “And we’re just coming up—we just freestyle, you know?—and Swae Lee said, ‘O.K., ladies, now let’s get in formation.’ And we put it on the VoiceNote. Swae Lee’s got so many voice notes that he doesn’t even record, but I’m like, ‘Dog, we got to do that “get in formation” ****.’ That could be a hard song for the ladies. Some woman-empowerment ****. Like, ‘Ladies, let’s get in line, let’s not just fall for anything.’ I’m seeing that vision.” When they got back from Coachella, they booked a studio, and Swae Lee “ended up just laying it down.”

A few months after this, Will was in L.A., where he attended a Clippers-Cavaliers basketball game. He knew LeBron James’s agent, Rich Paul, because he’d produced the John Legend song “My Shoes,” which was in the memorable 2013 Nike commercial that showed LeBron running through the streets of Miami. They were staying in the same hotel, and Paul invited Will to join LeBron and his friends after the game. But Will fell asleep in his room. “I woke up at two in the morning,” he said. “And I had some missed calls, and I called Rich back and I was like, ‘My bad, bro, you’re probably in the room by now,’ and he was like, ‘No, we’re still down here.’ So I went down there, and I was chopping it up with LeBron and the Cavaliers, and then Jay Z and Beyoncé just walked up. And this was really like a dream to me. I was just asleep upstairs and now I’m kicking it with Jay Z, Beyoncé, and LeBron. And Bey was like, ‘Yo, I like that “formation” idea.’ And I told her what I was thinking about the woman empowerment, and she was like, ‘Yeah I kinda like that idea.’ And she just left it like that.

yikes

Will later ran into Bey at a hotel-room hangout with LeBron James and the Cavaliers, he says. “And Bey was like, ‘Yo, I like that “formation” idea.’ And I told her what I was thinking about the woman empowerment, and she was like, ‘Yeah I kinda like that idea.’ And she just left it like that.” Although Beyoncé wrote new verses for the song, she built around the central mantra. “We were just thinking about it being a female anthem,” Will added. “Because I knew I just wanted a banger with Beyoncé, like a ‘Single Ladies,’ but I wanted it to be a new kind of chant.” Will spent a week in the studio with Beyoncé working on the track. She “took this one little idea we came up with on the way to Coachella, put it in a pot, stirred it up, and came with this smash,” he says. “She takes ideas and puts them with her own ideas, and makes this masterpiece. She’s all about collaborating.” He added, “That’s what makes her Beyoncé. Being able to know what she wants. A lot of people don’t know what they want.

I see.

Originally posted by Nemo Looooooooooooooool

[...] “She takes ideas [...]

Not her own.