It’s no secret that Kandi Burruss is one of the most successful songwriters in the music industry. Having written for artists to include Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, and Usher, it’s hard to imagine what artist hasn’t worked with the star from “The Real Housewives of Atlanta.”
During a recent interview with Glamour, the Grammy Award winner recalled some of her past work and shared the moments in her life that influenced, including a popular little number Destiny’s Child titled “Bills, Bills, Bills.”
Kandi co-wrote the lead single off the group’s second album “The Writing’s on the Wall” with producer Kevin “She’kspere” Briggs and the group’s members at the time: Beyoncé, Kelly Rowland, LeToya Luckett and LaTavia Roberson.
“When I got with the girls at the studio, we were singing them the idea,” the reality star explained. “I had the melody of how I felt like the verse should go, and we came together for the lyrics.”
When it comes to her writing method, Kandi revealed she uses a lot of her own experience, and when the time came to write this hit song for Destiny’s Child, this moment proved to be no different — despite there being a direct link to one of the girls in the group.
“I use a lot of my past relationships as inspiration. The relationship I had been in prior to [writing the song], I took inspiration from it…though I didn’t tell them that,” she continued. “Now, this is the really funny part: One of the girls that was in the group was dating my ex at the time. So I didn’t tell them that some of the lyrics in there were inspired by him. The part that was a clear inspiration — using my phone and pretending like he didn’t use it, driving my car and not putting any gas in it — that was real stuff that had happened to me!
The singer refused to name which one of the ladies was dating her ex. That didn’t stop some fans online from trying to figure out which bandmate it was, including one Twitter user who wrote, “Kandi wrote Bills, Bills, Bills about her ex who was dating one of the girls in Destiny’s Child. Now, which one was dating someone in Jagged Edge, Letoya or Latavia or both?”
The record proved to be a hit. Accompanied with a music video of them talking in a beauty salon with their friends, “Bills, Bills, Bills” earned the group and its writers two Grammy nominations for Best R&B Song and Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group With Vocals.
