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    I'll Give My Love If You Return It To Me: Babyface And The Bonds Of Collaboration

    The songwriter who defined '90s R&B has been getting his due lately, but more than his melodies, it's his ability to understand collaborators — so often women — that marks him as an icon of the genre.
    by Danyel Smith May 02, 2020 6 minutes
    Babyface's gift was "to be able to see what was special in me," says Karyn White, who had hits with the songwriter and producer in the late 1980s. Since then, he has shaped the sound of R&B via a string of collaborations. Here, he performs in 2015 with Ariana Grande, much of whose debut album, <em>Yours Truly</em>, he produced

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    In our new series on the art of sampling, hip-hop producers demonstrate how they find inspiration in classics, hidden gems, found sounds and other raw musical materials to create new hits. For each of the five videos in the series, NPR Music has asked a writer we love to do something similar. Their only instruction was to watch one of the videos, pick an element that inspired them, and spin it off in a new direction — to sample it.

    Today, Danyel Smith, the author of the forthcoming book Shine Bright: A Personal History of Black Women in Pop, follows the links between today's featured producer, Salaam Remi, and stars like Amy Winehouse and Nas to trace the essential role of collaboration in musical creation, and finds herself ruminating on a hit Babyface made with the singer Karyn White in 1989.

    Salaam Remi's words immediately make me think about the Fugees and Amy Winehouse and Nas and the art of collaboration. The

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