Billboard reports that Beyoncé is the #1 female producer of the 21st century based on Hot 100 performance


She’s got better jeans than Sydney.

Good for her.


This is no shade on Beyoncé but I feel like being the producer on your own music is very different from what is generally meant by music producer (i.e. producing other people’s music). This is coming from a female music producer in what is an extremely male dominated industry.

One of my closest friends from childhood is an absolute hipster. He has always been convinced that pop music isn’t made by real musicians and that the singer walks into the studio and sings the lyrics they were told to sing over a completed instrumental they’ve never heard before.

Many years ago I had the aux at a party and played Bootylicious. My friend’s mother was a huge Stevie Nicks fan so he starts ranting about the sample saying that he’s sure the singers don’t even know who Stevie Nicks is and that sampling is just lazy and it could be any other sound or instrument because the guitar riff from Edge Of Seventeen had nothing to do with the rest of the song or the lyrics.

My normal tactic for his rants like this was to ask him something like, Why do you assume that, what evidence do you have? But this time he was ranting publicly against my playlist and against my beloved Destiny’s Child.

I just had to retort. He made me do it.

I’m hag hive and one of the things that was amazing about the early years was the press. DC did an interview about the song. Kelly praised Beyoncé’s creativity with the lyrics and Beyoncé talked about the sample. She’d heard the original on a plane on the way to Japan and said the guitar reminded her of the curves of a woman.

My friend was actually impressed with the thematic link between the sample and the lyrics and vowed to give Beyoncé the benefit of the doubt from then on.

Beyoncé has many years of experience in the studio and it’s nice to see the world finally acknowledge it.