If you’ve listened to Beyoncé’s “Why Don’t You Love Me” and inexplicably felt like you were a spy in the middle of an international conspiracy, then don’t feel like you’re weird. When producers the Bama Boyz, created the song, that’s exactly how they felt.
The Grammy-nominated production trio of Eddie Smith, Jesse J. Rankins and Jonathan Wells are signed to Mathew Knowles’ (a.k.a. Beyoncé’s father) Music World Entertainment, and have worked with B for some time. In fact, the song’s inspiration came from the time they spent in London at the end of her B-Day Tour.
“After the tour left, we stayed over in the UK, because we fell in love with it. It was a big thing for us, being out there, and we watch a lot of movies, so we all felt like Jason Bourne, to be quite honest with you,” Rankins said. “We felt like James Bond or something. We were running around on like — this is kind of embarrassing — pretend missions in our head and we felt like we needed a theme song for it.”
He said they started working on the song that would become “Why Don’t You Love Me” in London, and completed it once they were back Stateside. They said that the song’s structure was unusual, but luckily it ended up in the right person’s hands.
“What happen was [B's sister] Solange called us and was like, ‘Hey, I’m going to write a couple of records for my sister. Send me some tracks!’ We had a lot of bangers that felt more like Beyoncé, but we actually put that one last on the CD because we figured ‘This is not Beyoncé,’ but we knew Solange would like it,” Rankins said. “So we stuck that one there — but we battled with even putting it on there, because it was the last one we expected her to pick. So Solange sent it back with a song written to it, and it was the ‘Why Don’t You Love Me’ lyrics. The song was hot!”
The Bama Boyz met in junior high and high school and linked back up in college at Alabama A&M University, where they threw parties as DJs. They eventually landed internships at Sony Music before hooking up with Mathew Knowles.
Despite their name, the group’s sound doesn’t necessarily scream Alabama. Their EP, Socially Awkward, is filled with music that can’t readily be classified as electro, R&B or hip-hop.
“We actually like the fact that our name is the Bamaz — people say, ‘Ah, they’re going to sound like this.’ But then we you hear [us], you’re like ‘What? Are they really from Alabama?’ It’s just like a gumbo of lots of different genres and styles.”
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