Is it true you didn't hear the version with SZA until the album was out?

Yeah! I had no idea what the finished versions of "I Do" or "Ring" sounded like. I didn't even hear the full version of "I Do" initially — I just heard a snippet on Twitter. At first I thought they'd kept me on the song, because that's how well SZA did it. She made it her own but she didn't change it drastically at all.



What are you like in the studio? Do you have stuff you need to do when you're there?

Going in with a clear head. It's not a ritual, but it's a different mindset for urban and pop. For pop, you're usually starting from scratch. I'll just have a musician play chords, and the chords are what inspires a feeling. With urban music, because it's such a drum genre, I need to feel the whole beat before I go in the booth. It just needs to evoke a kind of feeling. I'll just tell the producer to play through a couple of beats, and whatever one sparks something in my chest is the one that gets loaded up — and I see what comes out.



Have you found that you prefer doing pop or urban stuff more?

No, because I need a switch-up. If you do the same thing all the time, you get bored of it. I need a balance. I grew up with urban, so that's always going to be in my heart. But pop is great.



Is it usually the case that you're put in sessions to just write songs rather than writing for a specific artist in mind?

Unless I'm in with the artist or I set aside a day to work on material for one specific artist, I usually just go in and make songs based on how I feel. I don't think about who I'm doing them for, because that pigeonholes me. I try to make songs that I would want to listen to and then afterwards figure out who would sound good on it. Artists always want something that either no one else can do, or something that they've never heard before — something different. Me thinking about how an artist would do something is giving them what they're used to. I'd rather do what I want, and if they like it, they can put their own twist on it.



When you worked on the songs for Beyoncé and Jay Z, did you go out and meet them?

I can't really talk about that.



I read that the album was still being put together days before its release. What was that experience like for you?

I'll pass on that one, too.



Can you tell me about the inspiration for "LoveHappy"?

It came from Beyoncé and Jay Z. I was bumping Lemonade and 4:44 just like everyone else. I think it was brave of them to put their business out in the public like that, and to go through so much pain in the public eye. I tried to imagine what it was like and how strong they must have been to be able to overcome the struggle — to stick together and pull through.



Were you surprised when you heard what the songs sounded like when they were finished?

Yes, I was. With "LoveHappy," I didn't even know I had that song on there. I thought that I only had "Heard About Us." Then someone on Twitter was like, "Yeah, and she wrote 'LoveHappy,' too." With "Heard About Us," [Beyoncé] played it to me as soon as she'd recorded it and I was just like, "This is the best day of my life! I, Nija Charles, got Beyoncé to sing 'skrt skrt' in falsetto."



Tell me about what you've been up to with Normani.

I love her. We've worked a few times and I'm just so happy for her. The music that we've been working on I'd describe as New Wave, feel-good R&B. But I know she wants to get back to her New Orleans roots and incorporate that into her sound.



What's been the biggest learning curve for you?

Learning how to play the game.



Do you have plans to start producing again?

I'm getting back into it, definitely. That's where I started and I took a long break to focus on the songwriting. Now I realise that I can have a hand in both creatively, so why not?