In 2003, while still with R&B group Destiny’s Child, Beyoncé released her debut solo single, the addictive Crazy In Love. A collaboration with her future husband, the rapper Jay-Z, the song’s signaturehorn riff was sampled from a minor 1971 hit by the Chi-Lites called Are You My Woman (Tell Me So). Initially, the singer dismissed the sound as “too retro”, but producer Rich Harrison managed to persuade her that it would be a hit. He wrote the song in just two hours, after Beyoncé arrived at the studio looking dishevelled and told him “I’m looking crazy right now”. Harrison played all the instruments on the track.
The lyrics are almost completely in the present simple and are about a girl falling in love for the first time. Her friends do not understand why she likes her new man, but as Beyoncé explained, “She’s doing stuff she wouldn’t normally do, but she doesn’t care.” Jay-Z’s contribution is a braggadocio rap, boasting about his own success.
Crazy In Love was the only song to top both the UK and US charts in 2003, and won two Grammy Awards. In 2018, Rolling Stone magazine declared it the “Greatest Single of the Millennium – so far”.
I look and stare so deep in your eyes
I touch on you more and more every time
When you leave, I’m begging you not to go
Call your name two, three times in a row
Such a funny thing for me to try to explain
How I’m feeling and my pride is the one to blame
(Yeah, yeah) ‘cause I know I don’t understand
Just how your love can do what no one else can
Got me looking so crazy right now (x4)
Got me hoping you’ll page me right now, your kiss
Got me hoping you’ll save me right now
Looking so crazy, your love’s
Got me looking, got me looking so crazy in love
Uh oh, uh oh, uh oh, oh, no, no (x4)
When I talk to my friends so quietly
Who he think he is? Look at what you did to me
Tennis shoes, don’t even need to buy a new dress
If you ain’t there, ain’t nobody else to impress
It’s the way that you know what I thought I knew
It’s the beat that my heart skips when I’m with you
But I still don’t understand
Just how your love can do what no one else can
Got me looking so crazy right now (x4)
Got me hoping you’ll page me right now, your kiss
Got me hoping you’ll save me right now (hey)
Looking so crazy, your love’s (hey)
Got me looking, got me looking so crazy in love
I’m looking so crazy in love’s
Got me looking, got me looking so crazy in love
Young ‘Hov, y’all know when the flow is loco
Young B and the R-O-C, uh oh (oh)
Ol’ G, big homey, the one and only
Stick bony, but the pocket is fat like Tony Soprano
The ROC handle like Van Axel
I shakephonies, man, you can’t get next to
The genuine article, I do not sing though
I sling though, if anything, I bling yo
A star like Ringo, war like a Green Beret
Crazy bring ya whole set
Jay Z in the Range, crazy and deranged
They can’t figure him out, they like,
“Hey, is he insane?”
Yessir, I’m cut from a different cloth
My texture is the best fur, chinchilla
I been iller than chain smokers
How you think I got the name Hova?
I been realer, the game’s over
fall back, Young, ever since I made the change over
to platinum the game’s been wrap, one
Got me looking so crazy, my baby
I’m not myself, lately I’m foolish, I don’t do this
I’ve been playing myself, baby, I don’t care
‘Cause your love’s got the best of me
And, baby, you’re making a fool of me
You got me sprung and I don’t care who sees
‘Cause, baby, you got me
Baby, you got me (you got me so crazy, baby), hey