After a hiatus, singer Amerie is back to give fans a new album, and some clarity on long-swirling rumors about Beyoncé. In the early 2000s, Amerie and Beyoncé were releasing music that sounded similar, prompting some fans to wonder if Beyoncé had ripped off Amerie’s sound. Amerie has tried to clear up these rumors in interviews.

Amerie cleared up rumors that Beyoncé stole ‘Crazy in Love’ from her

In 2003, Beyoncé released “Crazy in Love,” the lead single on her debut solo album, Dangerously in Love. For years, fans have speculated that producer Rich Harrison initially intended to give the song to Amerie. She denied that there was any truth to this.

“I didn’t hear anything about it, but a lot of people would be like, ‘Wait, that’s not your record? Why didn’t he give that record to you?’” she said on The Joe Budden Podcast (per Revolt). “And I’m like, he never, he never played that record for me.”

Amerie also doesn’t think Beyoncé stole her sound

Amerie released her first album, All I Have, in 2002. She said worked with Harrison to create a new, exciting sound.

“After the first album came out, it made a lot of noise, and people, like, really love that album… But during that, he’s [Harrison] also a producer that’s coming up, so now he has all these people coming to him for records, you know what I mean. And we did create a sound together.”

Many people have compared Amerie’s song “1 Thing” off her sophomore album to “Crazy in Love,” fueling rumors that Beyoncé stole her sound. Amerie said this was not true, though. They had both just worked with Harrison as a producer.

“There were so many artists who were trying to work with him, so you know… he’s going to work with different artists,” she said. “He’s going to have different songs… He’s gonna want to play some songs for me as his artist, right, but he’s going to want to play some songs elsewhere because he’s trying to grow and make his name as a producer.”

In addition, “1 Thing” came out in 2005, two years after the release of “Crazy in Love.” With this in mind, the rumors make little sense.

She leaked her own song to keep it from Jennifer Lopez

Amerie did worry about another artist taking “1 Thing” from her. Her record label, Columbia, wanted to give the song to one of their more established artists, Jennifer Lopez. In order to prevent this, Amerie leaked her version of the song.

“‘1 Thing’ came out in 2004 because I leaked it over Christmas. Because everybody would be on break so they can’t stop anything,” she said, per The Daily Mail, adding, “I don’t really care about getting paid for it. I just want people to hear it because I believe in it.”

Harrison later worked with Lopez to create the song “Get Right.” It sounded similar to “1 Thing.”