Ilya Salmanzadeh reveals he had considered using the “God is a woman” chorus for Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s joint album as Ariana Grande was “locked in” with Pharrell: “It didn’t happen. Then, when we started again with Ari, we were thinking maybe it could be her singing the chorus, and we’d get a rap feature, but then when she heard the song, she was like, ‘No, we're writing this for me.’ I was like, ‘Okay, fine.’ She just wrote all the verses and the pre [chorus] and all those crazy harmonies that are in there. She did it all that day.”