And I think Miami at the time was peaking, in a way. It was a very happy time in my life. Tim was working out of Miami, Pharrell, Scott Storch, the whole Cash Money crew was all there. I remember Lil Wayne came to drop a remix verse on "Maneater.” We never put that out – I think it's available now. Everybody knows this, but Lil Wayne doesn't write anything down, he just comes and kind of channels it. At one point, his guys had a whole skate ramp in the parking lot at The Hit Factory — they had really moved in.

It was an exciting place to be. Forget the club, you wanted to be at The Hit Factory. There was a really weird work schedule. I personally would be hanging out at the beach, in the pool with my daughter, working on my suntan, and then I would head to the studio at like, 8 p.m.. Tim would get there at 8:30, 9. We'd work, and then by 1 a.m. I'd be really tired, because I was getting up with my daughter on her schedule around 7 a.m., so I'd go to this little room and crash on the couch for like an hour. Tim and his friends would go to the club, listen to the music, study what people are dancing to. He'd come back at 4 a.m., and we might work for another hour or three, then I'd go home.

The studio had an edge to it at the time. That's where Tim was at: leave, go to the club, come back, then basically live and die in the studio. He was coming off of two years where he’d parked his bus in the parking lot of The Hit Factory and lived on the bus. He had put his time in, so he was ready to pop off again. And I think he was feeling really good about himself; he was working out twice a day! I think he was getting ready for phase two. Although he has that Midas touch and he's really talented, he also put in the work. And I’m there as a new mom trying to make it work.

One night, we're dancing and having a good time, but it was 4 a.m. Tim looked at me like, "Ahh, you're tired, you're not gonna make anything good tonight." And I was like, "Yeah, I am! Whatever! Put a vocal effect on!" The way I like to work is to put the microphone inside the mix room, so you can hear your voice coming back through the speakers in the room, right on top of the track. It's very immediately rewarding. We had been watching Pink Floyd's The Wall on mute the whole night, and I started singing the opening lines of "Say It Right.” Tim immediately started building on the beat and we just jammed it out. That was a product of him being like, "You ain't gonna do shit tonight!"

