Singer, songwriter, producer and general creative guru The-Dream has teamed up with Genius to give insight on songs on which he worked with major artists like Jay Z, Kanye West, Beyonce and Rihanna. This is part of a large initiative by the iconoclastic tech start-up to broaden its readership and become a hub for straight-from-the-artist anecdotes about the making of and meaning behind their most popular records. His expertise as a writer and musician extends well back into the last decade; to wit, check out what he had to say about T-Pain and his massive, The-Dream-produced hit, "Buy U a Drank (Shawty Snappin')": "You can say whatever you want about Auto-Tune, but the way [T-Pain] used it had never been done before. That was art. You hit home runs a different way than I do. You get on base a different way that I do. But I have to respect how you play the game of baseball."

The-Dream, real name Terius Nash, also spoke on a litany of major hits, including Justin Bieber and Ludacris' massive "Baby," for which he recalls the hassle of trying to get Def Jam to cover his hotel room for two nights while he worked on the song. For Watch The Throne's Frank Ocean-featuring "No Church in the Wild," Nash admits that a fight over "Holy Grail," which ultimately went to Jay Z, spurned him to craft the record for both Jay and Kanye. In addition to songs that he himself worked on, The-Dream offers comments on songs by Otis Redding, UGK and Gladys Knight.

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