9. Jay ZThe Blueprint

‘Is That Yo Bitch?’ [from Vol. 3…Life and Times of S. Carter] is the song that made me write ‘I Luv U’ because of the structure vocally, the boy-girl response kind of thing there. It was that song and ‘What’s Your Fantasy’ by Ludacris, so the ‘I Luv U’ structure is based on them two. I actually wrote the lyrics to ‘I Luv U’ to ‘Is That Yo Bitch?’, and I think I got into Jay Z around that time. I wasn’t overly into him originally but that tune stuck out to me. That beat. I already loved Timbaland. I liked all the stuff he’d done with Aaliyah, Ginuwine and all that stuff. I knew his beats were different, he was sick. But when he did that for Jay Z… it was like garage tempo, and I think that’s what got me. You could spit on top of it. Someone could fling it in a garage set randomly. But as far as a Jay Z album that I know I could play all the way through is The Blueprint. There’s more tunes on there that I liked, everything from ‘All I Need’ to ‘Takeover’. There’s a bunch of tunes on there, it’s a wicked album.