After Chris Brown won a
Grammy for his "
F.A.M.E." album, in the category "
Best R&B Album of the Year", Eric Bellinger, who co-wrote "Say it With Me" for the album, thought, "Wow, I'm actually doing something here. I was doing something right because so many people get nominated and that's it; but to be a part of a project that actually won was the moment I realized I was in the right business." Bellinger also told
Billboard that he stayed with Brown in the studio every day for about two months. Then, RoccStar and PK played the beat and he immediately thought about Michael Jackson. So they said, "Go in the booth and do some Michael-type stuff." In another interview, Bellinger said, "[Chris Brown] really, really went back to the days of
Sam Cooke, but we were still able to keep it 2013 at the same time." Bellinger also cited Timberlake as another influence for the song and Brown's album
X. For one of the producers of the song, Roccstar, he was aiming for authentic music, saying that, "Seeing he's supposed to be the next MJ, it's kind of an automatic influence. I personally carry the Jackson sound a lot because I used to be around them so much. [...] With the bass line, I wasn't really thinking 'Let's make a Michael Jackson song,' I was just like 'let's make something that feels great.' Chris was like, 'We got to do some real shit this album. People need to feel exactly what I'm doing, it needs to be emotional and people need to be emotionally attached to this record,' so we just went in." ==Composition and lyrics==