Will.I.Am Talks About How He Met and Worked With Michael Jackson

William James Adams Jr, better known as Will.I.Am, talks about how his collaboration with the King of Pop came about. Should the main topic of our discussion be your collaboration with Michael Jackson? Yes, I’m going back to him again in December to start our work. He called me, and I thought someone was messing with me. I heard someone say: (imitates Michael’s voice) Hi. I’m Michael. And I said, “Oh, good for you. Stop it.” Then he said again: “I wanted to congratulate you for your success. It’s okay if I call you every day at four o’clock in the afternoon?” After that, he called me every day at four o’clock. At that time, I was busy touring with Pussycat Dolls. That’s why I started working on music for them in the bus. Is working with Michael different from working with others? Well, I was thinking to myself: what would happen when I see Michael? What is he going to do? When I finally met him and we sat down and talked, I was nervous and anxious. I couldn’t be like when I meet Justin Timberlake or other people. All my life, Michael has been a role model for me. I had to be honest with him, so I told him that working with him is hard for me. And he asked, “Why?” I explained to him that I didn’t grow up with Justin Timberlake’s music. That’s why working with him is easy for me. Justin and I are on the same level, and when you work with someone in the studio, you have to be on the same level—not higher and not lower. When I worked with Nas, I didn’t think I was working with the biggest songwriter in the world. Whoever you work with, you have to place yourself at their level. I really had to deal with this issue when working with Michael. Personally, do you like Michael? Personally, it was interesting and cool. I spent the entire first day of our meeting asking him questions. For example: when you did the Moonwalk for the first time, what was it like? How did it feel? It almost turned into an interview. All the music we make today comes from that. It all comes from Michael Jackson and James Brown. Michael told me that all this time, his source of inspiration had been James Brown. And I said, “Oh, really? I worked with James Brown.” He said, “You worked with James Brown? I always wanted to work with him.” Then I said, “Okay, let’s do it.” And that’s how I gained a bit of confidence to move forward. Is there a lot of pressure on you to come up with a great album? We talked about the work we wanted to do—how we were going to compete with Thriller. I told him: Michael, how do you compete with yourself? I know how to compete with the music market. But when you influence all this music market in every way—from music clubs to sponsors and videos—how are you going to compete with yourself? In response, he said, “Oh God, keep you.” And I continued, “No, seriously, I’m not going to tease you. When we go into the studio together, I need you to know this, because the music has to reflect that.” We had a deep and detailed discussion together, talking about computers, YouTube, MySpace, iTunes, cinema, and today’s things. Look at all the songs that come out every week. Their lifespan is only one week. You probably won’t listen to the songs that came out eight weeks ago anymore. But people are still listening to Billie Jean and Beat It. Source: eMJey / mjtkop