Each week, SPIN digs into the catalogs of great artists and highlights songs you might not know for our Deep Cut Friday series.
Beyoncé got a prestigious co-sign from Prince early in her career, when they performed the opening medley together at the 2004 Grammys. The most Prince-influenced music of her career came later, though, particularly on her collaborations with songwriter Terius “The-Dream” Nash for her fourth solo album, 2011’s 4. “1 + 1” and the deluxe edition bonus tracks “Dance For You” and “Schoolin’ Life” all have sonic and melodic hallmarks of Prince’s legendary ’80s run.
A key component of Prince’s signature “Minneapolis sound” was the beats he’d program on the LinnDrum, an early drum machine designed by Roger Linn, which Prince would run through a flanger effect on one of his guitar pedals. The-Dream’s frequent co-producer Carlos “Los Da Mystro” McKinney is particularly adept at recreating the sound of the flanged LinnDrum on songs. And “Schoolin’ Life” is, alongside The-Dream’s 2007 solo song “Fast Car,” one of Los Da Mystro’s best Prince pastiches, a track that would have sounded right at home on 1999.
Beyoncé, who shot to fame as a teenager as a member of Destiny’s Child, got a high school diploma after intermittently attending two Houston schools and getting tutored on the road. And The-Dream’s “Schoolin’ Life” lyric playfully riffs on the fact that Beyoncé never went to college. “I’m not a teacher, babe, but I can teach you something,” she sings. “Who needs a degree when you’re schoolin’ life?” Despite being left off the initial release of 4, “Schoolin’ Life” became a staple of Beyoncé’s live shows in 2012 and 2013, and appeared in the concert film Live in Atlantic City.
Three more essential Beyoncé deep cuts:
“Freakum Dress”
Washington, D.C.-based producer Rich Harrison is best known for producing “Crazy in Love,” the song that launched Beyoncé’s solo career in 2003. But Harrison is also the MVP of her sophomore album, 2006’s B’Day, laying down more bombastic funk beats on dancefloor killers like “Freakum Dress” and “Suga Mama.”
“Rocket”
“Rocket” from Beyoncé’s 2013 self-titled album, co-written by Miguel and Justin Timberlake, is her greatest slow jam, six minutes of sexy, sometimes disarmingly vulnerable pillow talk over a slinky, minimal Timbaland track.
“Church Girl”
In 2023, I interviewed veteran Chicago hip-hop producer Dion “No ID” Wilson for Stereogum and got the story behind “Church Girl,” the track released earlier that year on Beyoncé’s album Renaissance. No ID, who’d produced Jay-Z’s 2017 album 4:44, originally made the track for him, built on samples of the gospel group the Clark Sisters and the New Orleans bounce “Triggerman” beat. Eventually, though, the Brooklyn rapper’s wife reclaimed it. “He was rapping to it, it was for him. And he just put it in the computer, I never thought about it again,” No ID said. “Jay jokingly tells me, ‘Man, she stole my beat.’”
