The secret behind Beyonce's Latin crossover hit

By Leila Cobo

MIAMI (Billboard) - Producer/songwriter Rudy Perez has helped everyone from Christina Aguilera to Il Divo record in Spanish. His latest reverse-crossover project is Beyonce, for whom he has adapted songs for a rerelease of her "B'Day" album.

A Spanish version of her current Billboard Hot 100 chart-topper "Irreplaceable" has propelled the tune to No. 13 on Billboard's latest Hot Latin Songs chart. He recently talked with Billboard about taking that challenge.

HOW DID "IRREPLACEABLE" BECOME "IMPRESCINDIBLE?"

I have it all written out in phonetics. We read the lyrics together, and I tell her exactly what she's saying. Even if you don't explain it, she'll ask you because she's very meticulous. So she knows that if the phrase is largate, it means "get the hell out of my face." She says it with that same emotion.

I worked hard in trying to find the least amount of troubling words. For example, "to the left." How the hell do you say "to the left" in Spanish? A la izquierda, a la izquierda? That doesn't fit the music. It's an awkward word, and it didn't make sense. So I wrote, "Ya lo ves, ya lo ves." It's not exactly the same as the English, but it has the emotion and it has the concept of the whole English lyric, but perfectly done in Spanish where a Latin person from Argentina or Costa Rica can understand the story and identify with it. And yet I took some risk. Imprescindible, sustituirse . . . these are hard words, but she pulled it off.

I'm a singer myself. I'll sit there and sing it to her and give her a bunch of little tricks. Like, "Don't think of it as four words separated. Think of this as one word up to here."

DID YOU HAVE TO PRACTICE ROLLING R'S WITH BEYONCE?

I did this exercise with her, "Erre con erre cigarro, erre con erre barril, rapido corren los carros." She'd be laughing, and I'm like, "Beyonce, trust me, do this." She stands there literally sometimes six hours nonstop in front of the microphone trying to get this right. That's why she's a superstar.

HAVE YOU EVER MET AN ARTIST THAT YOU THINK JUST ISN'T

QUALIFIED TO MAKE THE CROSSOVER?

I still haven't gotten somebody that I say, "This guy just can't sing in Spanish." (The key is) getting the superstar to take the time and not come in and say, "I'm only going to give you 15 minutes." Well, you know what? You can't do it like that. You've got to take the time. And Beyonce gave me all the time.

Reuters/Billboard