Ryan Leslie: Madonna is the Reigning Queen

On Valentine’s Day, Madonna and her boyfriend Brahim Zaibat attended the Ryan Leslie concert at Irving Plaza in New York.

Ryan Leslie sat down with Wall Street Journal reporter Lee Hawkins’s for an exclusive interview to talk about his journey from a 15-year-old Harvard freshman who scored a perfect 1600 score on the SAT to become a major record producer. Of course they talked about Madonna.

Here’s a transcript by Madonnarama…

Wall Street Journal: Madonna was at the show. She came to watch you perform. How did that happen and what do you think about that?

Ryan Leslie: Everything that I’ve ever done with Madonna has always come as a surprise, because she’s really just the reigning queen of all things music, all things performance based.
Still the highest grossing tours, year after year after year.
Her stage show… incredible.
Her documentary pieces… the “Truth or Dare” piece, picked up by the Weinstein company, still printing money to this day.

The first time I got an email from her manager Guy, I didn’t really believe it. When he said “M is a fan, she likes your music and wants to take a meeting,” I was completely surprised, humbly, any of the words that you can think of. It’s Madonna!

I got an email from someone in her office who said “hey, I heard you got a show at Irving Plaza”. I thought that the tickets would have actually been for them, not for Madonna.
I said “Yeah, of course, I’ll put you on the list” and they said “It’s for the boss.”
We cleared out a section and she came by. I hope that it’s a testament to culturally, artistically and musically what I’m offering.
The feedback was, she didn’t like my Timbs (Timberland Shoes). She said I need to work on my footwear. I like the Timbs, I like that look.