Frankie Beverly Calls Beyonce’s Cover Of “Before I Let Go” “A Blessing”
Beyonce’s cover of Frankie Beverly and Maze’s “Before I Let Go” has launched a social media dance challenge that has spread like a wildfire, and now Frankie Beverly himself has called the rendition “a blessing.”
“When they played it, that’s when I heard the first draft of it, and I was blown away. It’s a blessing,” he told Billboard.
“It’s amazing how she works, she’s very smart. I’m caught off guard, but in a beautiful way…Then the way she just released it, it’s off the chain. She’s done so much, this is one of the high points of my life.”
Beverly said that Beyonce’s representatives called him about “a week or two ago” to play him the first draft of the track, and he was “blown away” by the singer who he calls “a great friend.”
Beverly said that he and Beyonce met when she was a teenager and her mother brought her to see Frankie Beverly and Maze at the Houston Rodeo, but the “I Been On” singer wasn’t a huge star then.
While speaking to Billboard, Beverly also talked about what inspired him to write the song in the first place.
“It was about a relationship I was in. It was just up and down, and by the end of it I wrote a song because I was feeling I needed to get out of it,” he explained. “I was so into the girl, but it just wasn’t working out. I was thinking, ‘What am I gonna do?” and that thought inspired the song. I was going to try to do all of these things “before I let go.”
Frankie Beverly and Maze’s “Before I Let Go” was released in 1981.
Maze featuring Frankie Beverly will be playing the New Orleans Jazz Festival on May 5.
Glennisha Morgan is a Detroit-bred multimedia journalist and writer. She writes about intersectionality, hip-hop, pop culture, queer issues, race, feminism, and her truth. Follow her on Twitter.
