The-Dream Lived a Humble Life Before His Life-Changing Collab With Britney Spears
Hitmaking producer The-Dream has worked with some of the biggest names in music over the past two decades. But before his rise to prominence in the 2000s, he was just another producer trying to get by.
The-Dream co-wrote Britney Spears’ song ‘Me Against the Music’
His life changed forever when he co-wrote lyrics for Britney Spears‘ hit 2003 collab with Madonna, “Me Against the Music.” He spoke about the time in a 2022 interview with Nile Rodgers on his Apple Music show Deep Hidden Meaning Radio with Nile Rodgers.
“[‘Me Against the Music’] was one of my first major songs where it’s like, this unbelievable moment that happened in my life,” Dream said.
“It’s so funny, me and Tricky Stewart, who’s the producer on that particular track at the time, we weren’t consistently working together, and it just so happens that him and a team that he had, and writers that predated me, were working on that particular project with Britney,” he continued. “It was a relationship he had with Jive [Records] at the time. So, the story is, literally Trick never asked me to write anything on this track. I literally went into his studio. At the time I was signed to Laney Stewart, which is his brother, and I went into his studio, I downloaded the track, took it over to the other studio, recorded my parts on it, and then put it back into the session.”
“He has this record and it has a couple things on it,” he went on. “I literally went from top to bottom and just stuck it there, put it in the Britney Spears folder, and just kept it moving and didn’t say anything about it.”
He had a car with no A/C and a Nokia cell phone with almost no minutes when he worked on the song
While The-Dream thought no one would notice his contributions to the track, he was quickly proven wrong.
“I get this call, he’s in New York, he calls me,” he recounted. “I remember being in the 1992 Cadillac Sedan Deville, had no AC in it, and it was hot. This is Atlanta. It gets hot. And he calls me and I pick up my phone, and back then the minutes, you have to pay for cell phone minutes. It’s not like now where the minutes are there forever.”
“Man, he called me and I’m like, ‘What do you want, man?’ It’s like two minutes on the phone. I’m like, ‘What are you saying? What’s going on?’ He’s like, ‘Man, I think Britney’s going to cut this record.’ And I was like, ‘I’m sorry, what?'” he remembered. “I think I hung up on him the first time, because I’m like, ‘Man, I ain’t got time for no jokes right now. You’re wasting my minutes. My Nokia phone, the battery is low. I can’t do it with you man. A/C out.'”
When he realized that Britney was actually working on the song he worked on, he was thrilled.
“I’m like, elated and I’m just driving down 285. I remember exactly where I was over by this mall called Cumberland Mall here in Atlanta,” he said. “And I was like, ‘What? Wow.’ And even if she didn’t, it was just a point that somebody’s listening to my words at that level, and it has a chance. So that was the beginning of a thing.
“It was a real good time,” he concluded. “I could still smell the beat-up leather in my ’92 Cadillac at that time.”
