An Oral History of Miguel’s ‘Sure Thing,’ A Viral Success and Pop Radio Hit After 15 Years 

Though R&B singer Miguel has been widely beloved in his genre since his major label debut thirteen years ago, the 37-year-old is besting himself in huge ways right now. “Sure Thing” — a contemporary classic that Miguel first wrote around 2007 and released as his first album’s second single in 2011 — is the No. 1 song on Pop radio right now and has spent five weeks in that spot. It’s at the eleventh spot on the Hot 100 this week too. While Miguel has earned a Grammy and 13 nominations, including Song of the Year for “Adorn” at the 2013 awards, these new chart placements are his top accomplishments in those realms. 

Miguel hitting the top slot at Pop radio isn’t his first time topping a chart, though; “Sure Thing” caught fire when it first dropped, hitting No. 1 on the R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay docket just months after its original release. However, it began to take off again last winter, jumping from 2.8 million weekly streams in October to 12.4 million by February, according to data from Luminate. It’s become a full-on viral phenomenon, particularly with a sped-up version of the song surging across platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels. 

Because “Sure Thing” has always been a bop — a sweet, creative serenade with rap sensibilities, pristine vocals, and edgy guitar — its resurgence represents a crossover from genre stardom to mainstream eminence that’s way past due. “I think when you experience success, inevitably, you’re going to hear opinions and fears from other people that are not your own,” Miguel tells Rolling Stone. “You’re dealing with other people’s ideas of what the limitations and rules are, what will and will not work — which is actually kind of why ‘Sure Thing’ never made it to pop radio until 2023. At the time, the perceived rules about what could and could not work were different.’” 

According to insiders, many people knew “Sure Thing” was special from the jump. Brite Ware, Miguel’s former manager, says they got it to Michael Jackson, who was drawn to Miguel because his tone reminded him of the great Stevie Wonder. “Sure Thing” was the Miguel song that caught Mark Pitts’s ear — he’s president of RCA Records and an industry veteran who’s worked closely with Notorious B.I.G, J. Cole, and Usher. Pitts went on to sign Miguel to his own company, ByStorm Entertainment, and helped him find his major label home. Today, he considers Miguel a “trailblazer” who helped expand notions of what R&B could be and what its singers could look like. 

Since he was 14 years old, Miguel had dreamt of and worked towards a career in music. “Sure Thing” launched it — but not without lost relationships and legal battles along the way. Here, the people who made the song hot break down everything from its inception to its revival. 

The Players (in order of appearance)

Writing and Recording

After being barred from another act’s music-making session that Happy Perez had invited Miguel to, the young singer started working on his own music on his ride home.

Miguel: I was living with my father. He had a house just south of downtown L.A. My father was a carpenter when I was growing up. He got laid off and then he went to college and became a teacher. After being a teacher for some time, he had saved up some money, had gotten remarried, and then they bought a house. It’s the first house he bought, and we kind of tore it down and rebuilt it. I’ll never forget, an entire summer, just working the whole time. I hated it in the moment, but I loved it in the end. That was the house that I wrote the majority of my first album in.

I was writing, recording all my songs at the time in my bedroom. I had a small setup that was just at the window of the bedroom that looked out to the backyard. There was a desk — not even a desk, it was like a tall chest. I would just set my laptop up there. I was recording myself on an Mbox; a piece of equipment. It was like the entry level Pro Tools setup.

[“Sure Thing”] came about from a session that I was invited to by the producer, Happy Perez. Hap had a session for a new group he was invited to come work with. Him and I had been working. We had met through Baby Bash out in Texas. Baby Bash, I met while I was doing a promo run for a record that I had previously put out through an independent record label wanting to compete on a major level called Black Ice. It was for a song called “Getcha Hands Up,” which, at the time, I thought was commercially viable. It definitely, in retrospect, fit what was going on at the time, but it definitely wasn’t the kind of music that I would’ve made for myself.

Brite Ware: These [Black Ice] guys were actually from the Bay Area, and he was signed to them I guess for a couple of years. They had got him on 106 & Park before. I guess they had a video of some song that he had put out before where he was looking like Usher. I don’t know if you remember that. He had the big hat on with the blazer or whatever. And they were spending money I guess.

Miguel: [Happy Perez] was an incredible producer and he liked my writing. He thought I was talented and so we kept in touch. He was working out of Corpus Christi and he flew to L.A. to work with this group. Because I lived in L.A., he invited me to come write with them.

Happy Perez: Just the first day I met [Miguel], I think we [worked on] an idea and just hearing his voice, I knew he was a star. I knew his voice was special. I know [it] as soon as I hear it — I feel like a lot of singers, you don’t really feel that with. Because we had met, [I was] like, “Pull up [to the session] and listen to some music,” maybe he can get on a co-write or something.

Miguel: But when I arrived, the A&R basically was like, “Nah, you can’t.” It was like a “We didn’t invite you” type thing. Oddly, I knew the A&R person and she still kicked me out. I think it was just more out of a comfort thing. Hap felt bad, but I was like, “Well, just give me some beats and then I can write some stuff and maybe it’ll work.” He gave me a beat CD and one of the tracks was the “Sure Thing” beat.

Happy Perez: I’ve done a lot of rap and some pop records, but I can do anything. I have no boundary. I remember creating that track with my cousin who actually played the guitar on it. I do all the guitars on most of the stuff I work on, so it always stood out to me that I didn’t play the guitar on that song. My cousin wrote this amazing riff and I produced the track.

I had probably made two really big songs. This was maybe around three years after those songs had their life already. I’m married with kids, so my kids were really young at that time. It was just a completely different life than now. I was definitely looking for that next thing and that next artist.

Miguel: On the way home [from the missed session], I had already come up with the first verse, or at least the approach. Just the flow of it. At the time no one was really… R&B didn’t sound like that. There was no one writing R&B songs with cadence like hip-hop or rap. And I was looking for exciting new things to do in the genre. I was just like, “How can I approach this as an MC, but do my shit over it?” 

Wayne was having an emerging moment. His visibility and his credibility as a MC was evolving exponentially, not just like, Lil Weezy from Cash Money. The internet is really starting to be a place where artists are experimenting in ways to build their own following and buzz. He was crushing it. So he was a massive influence in the lyrical approach. I went home and wrote the song. It had a completely different chorus. Somewhere in Hap’s files he has the song with the original chorus. I was like, “I just feel like this is not it.”

Within the next couple days he had already flown back. I think he was there for maybe two days. I sent him the song and he loved it. 

Happy Perez: I listened to it for hours because I knew how special it was. A lot of producers can write songs and hear vocal melodies, but I don’t really hear a lot of that. [The “Sure Thing” beat] could have very well been a rap song, but when I heard what he did to it, it just clicked. It was like, no one else could have that beat after. I didn’t want to show it to nobody.

Brite Ware: Michael Jackson heard “Sure Thing.” Michael Jackson heard “Vixen.” Michael Jackson heard that whole first album before anybody else heard it because John McClain [a music executive, childhood friend of Michael Jackson, and an administrator of his estate] is basically my uncle. So when they heard his tone, we all said the same thing, “He has a tone like Stevie [Wonder].” That’s what drew us to it.

Happy Perez: Because the song he sent was so good, I went home and wanted to make it as grand as it could possibly be. I remember adding a bunch of stuff to it and sending it back to him. I don’t know if he remembers this, but he was like, “No man, it was kind of fine the way it was.” He was actually right. I think I tried to do more drums to it and just make it hit harder and be more of a standout track, but that was a real moment where the track is not the star. What he wrote in his voice was the star of that song. The beat was just a co-star. 

Miguel: He may have made some final tweaks, but overall the feeling of the music is what inspired the lyrics. The moment I heard it, it instantaneously took me to a place of the message of the song.

I’m trying to place the timing of meeting [Nazanin Mandi], my ex-wife [within the timing of “Sure Thing”]. It would be at the time that we were already dating. I think in the past I’ve stated that we were going through a moment, a breakup or something, but honestly, I don’t remember if that’s fact or not. We did go through a breakup, but honestly, I feel like the song came before. And to be fair, not to take away from our relationship, but we were still dating, so it wasn’t like, an in-love thing. I think it was an aspirational song. When I listen to it now and I think about it, that’s really what it is. How the context of a song can evolve or can sort of at least frame your point of reference in life is such a trip.

Everything was a demo at the time because it wasn’t like we were getting songs professionally mixed. There was no one that was paying for it. It would just be demo songs that either I would use in order to try and get a deal or to place [with another singer]. We were sending the song out to get cut by other artists. It was like, “Yeah, it’s my song, but if someone else wants to cut the record, it could be the opportunity that leads to a bigger opportunity.” I didn’t want to give the song away, but when you don’t have any other source of income, when you’re trying to make it, it’s by any means necessary.

Brite Ware: He gives me “Sure Thing.” I put “Sure Thing” with the rest of the songs that we were already shopping and having meetings because every label called us in to meet with Miguel. Every label. But when I went to every label meeting, I never played “Sure Thing.” I always wanted to keep “Sure Thing.” This is going to be the song that’s going to cross him over, so I’m not giving that to them in any of the meetings. Every label passed on Miguel.

Miguel: [I was in] no man’s land. There was no career really. I had nothing going on, no massive placements or anything in the works. I was hustling. This was a pivotal creative moment in that I was really writing songs for me and hoping that maybe it would fit someone. But every time we submitted for other artists, either it was that I didn’t have a name, and so they wouldn’t give it a chance and they couldn’t hear through that or it just didn’t fit them.

I was broke, living at my dad’s house, trying to get on. Periodically, Hap would fly me out to Houston, to his house, and pay me a couple hundred dollars to write songs over the weekend, just so that I had some money to pay for my cell phone bill type shit. And Hap paid me crazy, he was actually paying me $1,200. I would come up with three songs or something. And this is an unknown artist. I was also cutting demo songs for Diane Warren when I could, she would kind of throw me some work. So I was just really hustling and trying to figure my artist thing out.

Getting Recognized

Mark, Miguel and Brite’s accounts of Miguel’s big break slightly differ — but they all agree they had a star on their hands. However, according to Mark and Brite, the independent label Miguel had signed to prior put up a fight as he was ready to make moves with a bigger company.

Miguel: It [was a] very different version of the industry in how an artist could get discovered and really get a deal. At this point the independent game, especially for R&B, was such a different landscape. R&B was not nearly as spotlighted or relevant. The sound, how penetrating it was, and the variety, it was a much smaller range.

At the time I was being managed by Brite Ware. As we were developing music and developing most of the material for my first album, he was also submitting songs. “Sure Thing” was one that he submitted to Mark Pitts. To his credit, [Brite] was very deliberate and diligent in reminding Mark about the song.

My understanding is that Mark had submitted it to Usher. I remember getting the news that Mark liked it, and this was Mark Pitts, he had managed Biggie! I’d never met Mark at the time, but he was the A&R for Usher. He had discovered Chris Brown. So I’m thinking, I’m like, “Damn, I’m going to get a song on Usher.” In my mind I’m like, “Woo, there’s no way they could, they’re going to deny this song.”

And so I’m checking every three days like, “Yo, what’d they think about the song?” And it was like months had gone by and you start to get used to this too, as a writer. It’s like all, “Okay, well this is not going to work.” But you hold on to the hope.

And eventually — it may have been three, four, five months later down the line — Mark had asked that we come out there. And again that’s to Brite’s credit, he’s a very diligent guy and I’ll always be grateful for that. I guess [Mark had] been listening to the song and Usher, for whatever reason in his creative process, just hadn’t got around to cutting a record. And so he flew us out to New York and we met for the first time. 

I feel like at that point, somewhere in between that time he wanted to hear more records. So we sent more records that I had written and he was impressed. He was like, “Wow.” He definitely heard my writing and my point of view. I think he heard something special. And to his credit, the majority of what we sent is on that first album.

Brite Ware: I gave it to Mark. Mark fell in love with it. Gave it to Usher. Do you know less than two weeks later, Mark calls me back and says, “Usher said whoever’s singing this song needs to keep this song. It’s a hit record. Can I meet Miguel, Bright? What does Miguel look like?” I said, “Listen, Mark, he’s not anything like what we’ve already had. If you’re looking for another Usher, if you’re looking for the big collar with the big cap, it’s not working. If you’re looking for another Chris [Brown], this isn’t that. This kid is way left.” And I’m telling you the way the industry is going because I see Bruno [Mars] coming. I see The Weeknd coming. I see the lane that R&B is going. So I told Mark, “He’s something totally different.”

Mark Pitts: “Sure Thing” was the first [Miguel] song I heard. It was actually sent to me for Usher. It takes [Usher] a minute to get the songs. I’m sitting there living with the song, and I’m like, “This motherfucker here,” so I asked [Brite Ware] to send me another song, and then he sent me “Quickie.” Then I was like, “Oh my God, this dude is crazy, I need to see him right away,” and flew him in and I signed him on the spot. Usher was trying to record the song, I was like, “No, dog, let that go, this is going to be an album track for you, this song can make this kid’s career.” Usher records everything and he stacks records, so I just wanted to make sure this was Miguel’s baby.

Because of the way he sang that song like a rapper, “Sure Thing” felt like how I would want to say something to a girl without feeling wack. That was at the time we had dudes like Ne-Yo. A male artist can write it from a girl’s standpoint to make a girl feel good, but then you can do it from a male… it’s just something about the way he wrote it that made me feel like, “This is exactly how I would want to say it.” Then “Quickie” was just like a slap and a hug, saying, “I just want a quickie,” but the melodies and his tone softened it up.

Brite Ware: We go to the meeting. Mark doesn’t even play “Sure Thing” in the meeting. They just want to meet him. Before I even get to the building, me and Miguel, the whole entire building is excited about “Sure Thing.” The promo department, they got signs on the wall. He’s not even signed yet. They’re just like, “We love him. We love this song.” That’s when I said, “Okay, now we can introduce the song the right way because we have the right promo team. We have the right staff. Now, this is the one.”

I did the whole first album [All I Want is You], me and him. That whole album was done four years before the public even consumed it. My sister died 2005, November. My sister and my grandmother both passed away two weeks apart from each other, so I moved from Detroit to Houston. [By] 2006-ish, March, “Sure Thing” was completed.

Happy Perez: I remember coming to LA to mix the record with Miguel and everybody, and just being excited. This song’s about to come out and everything’s about to happen. Then, whatever happened happened and he wasn’t able to release it for a few years. I just remember feeling like we were just sitting on something that was going to be massive. It was kind of frustrating too, because I was actually going through a lot of things at that time. Imagine going through something and you need something to happen and you have the thing, but it can’t come out to the world yet. 

The music industry is not always fair. You make a couple big songs, things happen, and those songs have a shelf life, and then royalties clear up. You get to a point where music is not really providing like it should and you have this song that you know is going to change everything, but it can’t come out yet.

Mark Pitts: There was a long delay in the process of Miguel because when we were getting started, a company he used to be signed to, they came out of nowhere the day I was about to put out a sampler. We had a cease and desist. It took so long for us to get this thing done. Thank God he was signed to me [through Mark’s own entertainment company ByStorm], ’cause if he was signed straight to the label, they probably would’ve just let him go because it was sitting around. I was fighting the fight. 

Brite claims that he found out that Miguel had signed to Black Ice after they started working together — and when he looked over the deal, it was a bad one. “He was tied in to some guys that really didn’t know the business but had the money,” says Brite. “We saw that he didn’t have any outs.” After the singer signed with Pitts, Miguel became entangled in a lengthy legal battle between Black Ice and his new label, Jive/RCA.  Black Ice could not be reached for comment. Miguel and a representative of Mark Pitts declined to provide documents to elaborate on the legal disputes between Miguel and Black Ice. Miguel also declined to comment further on his relationship with Brite Ware.

Brite Ware: While all this is going on, [Miguel] and I go our separate ways. I haven’t spoken to Miguel since 2009. During that time I went through a lot; mentally, as a man. When you lose your grandmother and your sister two weeks apart from each other and then I’m trying to handle [Miguel] and his business and all these producers [as management clients] and I got a kid, it was just a lot. This is when Mark and Sony [Jive and RCA’s parent company] step in and now they got to deal with [Black Ice]. I’m totally out the picture now. Me and Miguel have never even got back on the same page.

Releasing

After Black Ice and Miguel reportedly settle the label’s suit for monetary gain as Miguel takes off in 2010, he gears up to release his first studio album, All I Want Is You. Brite Ware tells Rolling Stone he didn’t advocate for his own cut so as not to over-complicate an already-complicated signing. He says he feared that Miguel might get dropped in light of the trouble.

As they roll out the album, Mark Pitts insists that the titular song “All I Want is You,” (featuring his other new management client J. Cole) be the first single instead of “Sure Thing.” This is to Miguel’s dismay.

Miguel: I wanted [“Sure Thing”] to be the first single because I felt like it ticked all of the boxes. It was creative, the approach was fresh and unheard of. It was clever. I felt like it was the most all-encompassing example of the kind of artist at the time that I wanted to be and the tone that I wanted to set.

Mark was like, “No, ‘All I Want Is You’ is the one.” And I was like, “Nah, it sounds too East Coast.” I’m from L.A. I had all these reservations. I remember having a conversation with him and nearly coming to tears: “No man, don’t do this. This is the one. This is the right introduction.” And he was like, “Bro, believe me, I got you.” Actually, to be fair, he was right. He knew the company profile, he knew the promo department, he knew how he could get the record on and that it would be a segue into getting the right attention and momentum so “Sure Thing” had a chance.

Mark Pitts: I remember he was trying his hardest. He came to a video shoot, it was Usher’s “OMG” shoot, and he was like, “This is how I want to start, please.” He was going in, and I was like, “This song is too amazing to use this as a guinea pig.” Because he was so different, the fact is his vibe was different, he was trying to find this look, he was like a trailblazer, I told him how I appreciated it, but, “You still a Black artist, so we got to spoon feed them.”

He brought an edge to it in a way that’s rock. When I first signed him, I was excited. I had him come meet me at the studio. I wanted him to meet Usher. I get to the studio and he’s already there. I remember walking in and he had on eyeliner. I stopped. I wear my emotions on my sleeves. People know there ain’t no fronting to me and the face reads it. I’m like, “Dude, what is that? What’s going on?”  We weren’t as open in the world [as] we are now, so I’m like, “I want to understand what it is you’re trying to do so I know how to hold you down.”

He started to explain like, “I’ve been wearing eyeliner ’cause I be on my rock and roll shit,” and then he stopped and just looked at me and he’s like, “Nigga, it’s ’cause I just like this shit.” The way he said it made me feel wack for not having it on. I’m looking in the mirror like, “Maybe I need to be wearing this shit.” He owned it. It was a learning moment for myself and I was like, “I see what you’re trying to do, and we just got to ease you into it.” I told him that Outkast couldn’t have started with “Hey Ya.”

Miguel: Prior to Mark hearing the record, it was already sort of a big song on MySpace. No one was doing data. It was the most basic version of data at the time — you could go to MySpace and see how many plays a song had on someone’s page. And “Sure Thing” was on my page and it already had millions of plays. It was a nice thing to mention, but at the time, labels were not using that as a reason to validate or to sign artists necessarily. Once “All I Want Is You” did really well, I felt really strongly that “Sure Thing” would do the same.

Then, we shot a video with Hype Williams and I was excited, I was gassed, I was very confident. I can’t even front. Thanks to our promo department, and again, the strategic play, it did really well. The fans who already knew the song from MySpace were like, “We’ve been playing this song.” I think they took a lot of pride in it at the time. It really helped with radio and how it researched, which they used to dictate whether or not they put a song in and how often they play it. 

Happy Perez: Once “All I Want is You” came out and the album was coming, I knew that we were approaching the actual release [of “Sure Thing.”] Once it came out, it did everything that we believed it would do. It set me back on course of where I was supposed to be at. I met Frank Ocean probably around 2007, but Nostalgia Ultra came out when “Sure Thing” came out. So the whole trajectory of my career changed again.

Resurging and Reflecting

Miguel had gone on to enjoy an incredibly successful career before “Sure Thing” began to blow up in a new way recently. Suddenly, he gets a phone call from Mark Pitts in the middle of the night to let him know the song’s newfound virality was translating to real record sales.

Mark Pitts: I was in a research meeting where you read the data and all that stuff. It’s normally about all the rap for the most part. Karl Fricker [an RCA executive] came up and mentioned what’s going on with “Sure Thing.” Come to find out it’s been bubbling for a few weeks. I was just proud, because I remember being told, “Yeah, he’s talented, I just don’t know how it’s going to get played on the radio.” It’s the same thing as at the time when I signed J. Cole — “he’s a backpack rapper.” It’s like, you’re judging based on what the game was telling you today, as opposed to what the game could tell you tomorrow.

Man, [the internet is] everything now. The fans are the A&Rs. You have to build an audience. Listen, it ain’t my favorite part of the game, especially from where I come from, but I do understand you got to adapt or die. Radio still matters, but not as it used to. It’s not the first thing that artists, fans, or the kids [are] listening to. It’s not even the third or fourth thing. The internet means it all because you got to get it to the folks, and that’s the best way to. They determine what it is, and we read off of that.

Brite Ware: The original plan for the song was to do four different versions. We’re going to do the original. We’re going to do a Spanish version. We’re going to do a EDM version. We’re going to do a House version. Isn’t it a coincidence that in 2023, the kids decided to speed it up? That’s what brought it back to life when, really, that was the original plan in 2005 when we made it.

Miguel: On the one hand, it’s like, “Wow, they reached back pretty far. Where did this come from?” And then on the other hand, it makes me think of what I was aiming for in my bedroom, of the artists that I grew up listening to, and the kind of songs that I was reaching back to when I was 17, 18, 19, that age range. I was really working on crafting the kind of music that just felt timeless to me at the time, But I was wanting to craft something that felt uniquely mine. So, when I see it kind of have these moments over and over again, it always reminds me of who I set out to emulate.

I’m super grateful to anyone who in any way, shape or form has created a piece of content and shown love with the song in their own way. So I hope anyone who reads this article knows I’m deeply inspired that we connected through music and that they found something that they related to, that they felt was worth their time to create with. Then, I’m also like, “Yeah, but that’s what we’re supposed to do. That was the whole objective.” It’s a lot of gratitude and it’s a little bit of, “Fuck yeah, that’s right. We were right.”

[When I was making “Sure Thing”] it was just me in the room going, “I want to do this,” and being delusional all on my own. The artist that I am today…my delusion is a choice now. I choose to be delusional and to believe in ideas beyond what is acceptable or what is expected, because I understand that that’s what anything new requires. Someone had to believe that it could be done and convince enough people — and the right people — that it should be.

Happy Perez: To me, it should have been number one on pop radio 10 years ago. I knew it was that good of a song, but it’s all good because people are finally catching up. We definitely were doing some shit that was out of the box, but that’s all we ever did though.

Brite Ware: My daughter… “Sure Thing” was the demo that I’m driving her to school with in grade school every single day. I can’t play “Vixen.” I can’t play “Quickie.” Now, she would ask me every single day, “Daddy, why do you keep playing this record over and over? It’s not on the radio.” I got a smart-mouth little kid. She winds up learning the song. Do you know my daughter — the same day that this song went number one last week — graduated from St. John’s [University]? As she’s walking across the stage at St. John’s, I’m getting an alert that “Sure Thing” went number one. I’m crying now. People are looking at me like, “What’s going on?” I’m like, “God, why are you doing this today?

I haven’t talked to Miguel. I don’t even have a plaque for that record. I didn’t gain anything from “Sure Thing” except for it going number one, my daughter graduating college, and me just finally having a peace of mind.

Me and Miguel’s story, it’s your basic, typical, “they started off together, they didn’t finish together” situation. There was no beef, there was no animosity. I had his back on every level. Never lied to him. Everything that happened that I told him was going to happen happened. It’s just that I wasn’t around to celebrate it with him. 

I got love for Miguel. I’m proud. He went on to win a Grammy; he went on to learn the business. It’s like everything that I told everybody he was going to be beforehand and they didn’t believe me. For “Sure Thing” to go number one and do what it’s doing, this is the closure that I’ve kind of been looking for for damn near 20 years.