Darkchild, Yeah: 10 Songs You Didn’t Know Rodney Jerkins Wrote
Déjá Vu – Beyoncé
With the exception of maybe her latest project, B Day is my favorite Beyoncé album. And Rodney Jerkins was a part of that albums lead single “Déjá Vu” back in 2006. Jerkins was a huge part of this song. It was he who came up with the concept of doing a retro type track with real horns and real bass. The song’s title is a nod to throwing back to that classic 70’s style. Jerkins wrote the lyrics with Makeba Riddick and presented it to Beyoncé, who of course approved. The story goes that Jay Z jumped on the track when Beyoncé caught him trying to sing along to one of the earlier recordings of it.
She told MTV, “When I recorded ‘Deja Vu’ … I knew that even before I started working on my album, I wanted to add live instruments to all of my songs,” she explained. “It’s such a balance [of music on the song], it has live congas, live horns, live bass. It’s still young, still new and fresh, but it has the old soul groove. The energy is incredible. It’s the summer anthem, I pray. I feel it. It’s already broken records. Rodney Jerkins is incredible, Jay of course is on it, he blessed the song, I’m happy with it.”
The song did indeed become a hit it peaked at number four on the Billboard Hot 100 charts.
