Crazy In Love - Remix

The horns, which are the star of this song musically, were sampled from the 1970 Chi-lites track, "Are You My Woman (Tell Me So)." That song reached #72 in the US, a surprisingly low position considering the mighty horn riff. But unlike Beyoncé's song, that one wasn't able to carry the energy from the horns throughout the track. "Crazy In Love" is about as good as it gets in terms of samples, taking a killer section from a relatively obscure song and building around it to give it support.

Jay-Z did the rap. He and Beyoncé were dating, which made it convenient for him to make many guest appearances performing his rap. When Beyoncé married the 12-years-older Jay-Z on April 4, 2008, the couple shared their first dance to "Crazy in Love." The two met in 2000 at MTV Spring Break, and started dating two years later. Their first musical collaboration was the track "'03 Bonnie And Clyde," which appeared on Jay's 2002 album Blueprint 2: The Gift And The Curse.

Grammy-winning producer Rich Harrison played all the instruments on this song, including the sequencers and the congas. He even took care of all the samples. Harrison had treasured the Chi-lites sample long before he met Beyoncé. He knew he could do something special with it, and was reluctant to leak it to the wrong artist. He explained to MTV News: "I hadn't really shopped it much, because sometimes you don't want to come out of the bag before it's right. People don't really get it and you'll leave them with a foul taste in their mouth. So it was just something that I held on to until I got the call from B." When Harrison first played the beat to Beyoncé, the Texan singer initially had doubts as it seemed too retro, no one used horn riffs in the 21st century. However she came round to the idea and gave the songwriter two hours to pen the song, whilst she disappeared for a break. 120 minutes later, Harrison had written the verses and the hook, leaving the bridge for Beyoncé.