New Songs Featuring Fabolous

Beyonce Experimented 'With Everything' On '4,' Says Engineer

"I was cleaning toilets, ordering food, doing maintenance around the studio when I first started," Young says, recalling his internship days. "But it never felt like a day of work. That's when I knew I'd found my calling." An ambitious kid who once DJ'd all-ages clubs, Young moved to New York two days after graduating from Full Sail's sound engineering program in 2005. Soon, Island Def Jam recording artist Fabolous recruited him to engineer his recording sessions.

Young: A friend of mine, [BET "106 & Park" associate producer] Omar Grant, who was working at Epic Records at the time, worked with Destiny's Child years ago. And I guess Beyoncé needed a fill-in engineer for the day. This was April 2010. She'd finished her last album and . . . was ready to get back in. Beyoncé wanted to cut a new song . . . I came in and she told me, at the end of the day, that I did a great job. A few months later, I got a callback to do more sessions. But the first studio we went to overseas was in [England] . . . a place called Bath. Peter Gabriel has a studio in a village that looks like "The Lord of the Rings" called Real World Studios. Beyoncé and I were in Gabriel's private room . . . It has every musical instrument that he ever collected hanging on the walls. It looks like a madhouse for music . . . a really creative space. It's easy for people to do their own setup at home . . . and get a decent sound. But the problem is, a lot of people don't know how to record. You may have the greatest mic and all the greatest gear, but then your vocals are distorted. One of the problems is, kids are trained to just hear MP3s . . . very loud. They don't care about the sonic qualities of the song. But you can't fight technology [laughs]. Yeah [laughs]. It's been such a ride. But the important thing is, I never stopped. I've never taken a vacation. When you're not around you miss opportunities. That's why I have no problem being in a studio 120 hours in a week. That work ethic is what helped me get to where I am so quickly-I'm now mixing Beyoncé records. No other 26-year-old can say that.

"I was cleaning toilets, ordering food, doing maintenance around the studio when I first started," Young says, recalling his internship days. "But it never felt like a day of work. That's when I knew I'd found my calling." An ambitious kid who once DJ'd all-ages clubs, Young moved to New York two days after graduating from Full Sail's sound engineering program in 2005. Soon, Island Def Jam recording artist Fabolous recruited him to engineer his recording sessions.