Co-producer, “Changes Clothes” and “Allure”Jay Z has always been a genius. He was always the one to watch. He always knew how to make the song sound right. His tone, his attitude—everything would always get you up, get people dancing or motivated. It seemed like he was his own campaign manager. His team called me in at the last minute for The Black Album, and I was honored. When Jay's in the room there was no fucking around. I was in there like a beast pressing the record button, stopping, pausing, forwarding, and rewinding. I was keeping it straight ahead like, “Let’s finish this tune and make it sound right.”

KYAMBO “HIP HOP” JOSHUA

Those sessions had a lot of urgency and a lot of ideas. Everyone came in with their best. Instead of it being about this producer or that producer, it was more of, This is the last album.

CHAD HUGO

It was like we were a part of a security team. I would be like, “What can I do? What skills can I bring?” If Jay’s vocals are kicking beyond the threshold, turn the compression down. If there's a lot of ground noise, let's throw a gate on it. That snare sounds flat, let’s make it crunchy and percussive, almost like a gunshot to your heart. Being in tune with your surroundings—that shit actually paid off.

KYAMBO “HIP HOP” JOSHUA

DJ Quik came in because Jay wanted to fill that West Coast void. Kanye came with his thing. Sometimes I would hand Jay the tape and he would listen to it and Kanye'd be like, "I wish I was there. I could have told him to do this or do that." Pharrell came around, we went to Virginia and did some stuff, including one song that didn't make the album.

GEE ROBERSON

I remember the moment of Kanye selling “Encore” to Jay, performing it like, Yo, this is the one. Kanye is a genius at really knowing the depth of a track. He’s hands down the best producer I’ve ever seen in my life that can paint the whole picture of a track and give the vision of it how it could be performed onstage and pierce the fans’ hearts. “Lucifer,” for Kanye, was about how it would sound in the car or how kids will react hearing that beat and hearing Jay rap on it, as far as the hood. For me those are the most memorable moments of that project, being in there when Kanye would paint his picture.

Kanye West in the studio, recording "Lucifer"

I introduced Jay to Kanye and Just Blaze, back in 1998. It was personal thing for me that I wanted to get one new producer on The Black Album. When I heard that Aqua track [“My 1st Song”] I was like, This is a no brainer. Jay cut it and he ended up keeping it. I felt great about getting a new guy a look.

JOE “3H” WEINBERGER

Co-producer, “My 1st Song”

I had formed a really close relationship with Jay's team: Gee Roberson and Hip Hop. When The Black Album was coming, they did this series of ads in the hip-hop magazines. "The Black Album: Jay Z's final album." The ad listed off 12 of the greatest producers on Earth. But I was like, Fuck that. Every album Jay brings in at least one or two new kids. I was the most relentless crazy person ever. I would stroll over to Aqua's house—he was more of a structural producer. He would come in on the drums, chop the sample, he would come up with something more playable. I needed something to fill a void in Jay's body of work or strike a chord with him. It was less about the hot beat and more about how do we outsmart the other young producers. I knew that one good beat didn't mean shit. I would go see Gee and Hip Hop every week and play them beats. I was never like, This is for Jay, but I always would come in with one or two ideas that I thought could work.

AQUA

Co-producer, “My 1st Song”

I was an intern at MTV News, and had access to their entire library of videos. I could use an internal Google search and look for whatever I wanted. I snuck in on the weekend, and decided, it would be cool to get some unreleased Biggie and 2Ppac stuff to be able to bring home to my friends in L.A. So I check out all these data tapes and I dubbed them over to VHS. One of them was this unreleased—bits of it had been released—interview with Biggie and Puff.

After I made the “My First Song” beat, I was sitting in my parents’ basement, feeling like the intro could use a little something. I got the idea of running some dialogue over it to set a tone or set a theme for a song. I decided to pull out that VHS, and I snagged that little bit of Biggie dialogue which everybody now knows as the intro to “My First Song.” I wasn’t in the room when Jay heard it, but I would imagine that that intro had a lot to do with sparking an instant idea about what he could do with that beat.

Kanye West, Joe “3H” Weinberger and Gee Roberson in 2004.

JOE “3H” WEINBERGER

After Jay heard our beat there was like four months of waiting. They were being very quiet and secretive. Then Jay and 50 Cent were out in Vegas and I was out there working with Whoo Kid and Gee. Gee snuck me and Aqua backstage to go meet Jay Z for the first time. We were both 20 years old or some shit. He was like, "I love the beat. I can't say more than that.”

Kanye was an unsigned artist when Aqua and I were getting our beats together. Aqua’s talents were novice but he was my boy, so he got to meet Just Blaze and Kanye. They went record shopping together, and Just and Kanye were super stoked for Aqua as a producer and for me. It was a cool community thing. I feel grateful and humble to be a part of it. Sometimes that song comes on randomly in a playlist and I'm like, "Nah, I'm not in the mood to listen to that shit." It's so emotion provoking.

LUIS RESTO

Co-producer, “Moment of Clarity”

I worked on the “Moment of Clarity” beat with Marshall [Mathers]. Marshall and I got along. I was classically trained in the piano and always gravitated towards strings. That’s where we got a common ground, that I brought that classical element. When I hear the “Moment of Clarity” lick, I can feel it in my fingers. It's a pretty sparse track, but that left room for Jay to do his thing and Marshall knew that. They came back to me and said, Jay likes this, so we have to mix it. How significant the album is or was didn’t register with me at that time. It was just work that we did. Now, I feel so blessed to work with Marshall and to have done work that Jay Z loved.

WIZ BUCHANAN

Producer, “What More Can I Say”

We were working with Lupe Fiasco. The guy that he owned Lupe’s label, him and Jay were really good friends. It came up that Jay was working on his last album and we might be able to get him some music. I sent him one record with the hook, intro, and everything in it already. They called back like, “Yo, send the files.” Then Jay called like, “Tell your peoples I think I bodied this beat. Tell them to come to the studio.” It was surreal. We just sent one beat. That was our first placement ever. I wasn’t even really a producer, I was in a rap crew. The kid that sang on the hook lived across the street from me in the projects. We recorded the hook in my house. The beat was maybe a year or two old before I even sent it to him. I had played it for a couple people and they didn’t get it. Certain tracks are just meant for certain artists. Jay said, “What if I hadn’t liked that beat?” I was like, “If you didn’t like that you wouldn’t have liked anything.”

You listen to the bravado on Jay’s records, so you would assume that he would be very full of himself. But in the studio he came in and just embraced us, talking to us like he knew us for years. He’s a real funny guy. He’s hilarious. He was easy to talk to. It wasn’t like standing there in front of Jay Z. It was just like dude from the block. His ego wasn’t to the point where he would get crazy. He would take criticism and respond. He’s a real smart dude. A lot of times you have sessions and there’s a nervous energy in the room, but there was none of that at all. It was fun.