Timbaland News

Despite the fact that Timbaland racked up his third number one R&B/hip-hop album for Missy Elliott in 2001, it was still a bittersweet year for the noted Virginia-bred producer, who's sculpted infectious, syncopated rhythms for the likes of Jay-Z, Ginuwine, and Ludacris, among others. Of course, 2001 will forever be remembered for the September 11 terrorist attacks, but for Timbaland, it also marked a very personal tragedy: the death of his protégé, Aaliyah, in an August plane crash. It was Timbaland who helped the young, multi-talented artist reinvent herself and garner comparisons to Janet Jackson with her 1996 sophomore album, One In A Million, and he played a significant part in her career until her death shortly after the release of her critically lauded final effort, Aaliyah.

LAUNCH spoke to Timbaland just a month after Aaliyah's untimely passing. Proudly wearing black Aaliyah-tribute T-shirt, the usually media-unfriendly artist was eager to talk about the tumultuous year, as well as his latest album with creative cohort Magoo (which will probably be their last), his plans for his new Interscope-distributed Beat Club record label, and Beat Club's first signing, Southern sensation Bubba Sparxxx. Here's how it went:

LAUNCH: So you've got a female rapper, Ms. Jade, coming out on your label. I think her song "Dreams" is pretty rough and rugged. She reminds me of a young MC Lyte. How are you going to market her?

TIMBALAND: I know what it's gonna do to her know--like, I tell her she gonna do two bars on Bubba's new video and then go back in the song "Lovely." She gonna go there. She real particular about her rap. She wanna make sure it's not gonna be a commercial record, she make sure she gonna spit like two ghetto lines that make people go like, "Oh, snap!" She like that, man--she's young, she's ready. The one thing I gonna try to do with her, the one thing that I watch a lot of females do, they try to go commercial. That ain't gonna happen with her. Like, if I do a commercial record, I'm gonna make sure I come back to the 'hood, you know what I'm saying? Like what I see with Eve and [Lil'] Kim, you get too glossy--and it's cool, but sometime you gotta turn down certain stuff, because those people that like you when you got 240,000 [record sales] in your first week, and then you drop and go to 100,000, and this is your second album. There's a problem. Somewhere, you crossed over. Like you gotta do what Jay-Z said: "I didn't crossover to the suburbs, I brought the suburbs to the 'hood." You know that's what you gotta do--make people feel you, and not go into different directions.

LAUNCH: I think with your production, you're able to reach both audiences, and no one ever complains.

TIMBALAND: Yeah, there's no complaint. I'm trying to do something real different; I'm trying to bring the street to real pop. I'm trying to bring the street to pop. Not watering it down, no nothing. Just giving it down to you in our world. I ain't trying to water songs down. The music might be real--like danceable, you going to be able to dance to it--but I ain't going to water it down. .

LAUNCH: Was it your idea to have Nelly Furtado be on Missy Elliott's "Get Ur Freak On" remix?

TIMBALAND: See, what happened with that is, I had Nelly Furtado album; I was telling people, "This girl's crazy, this girl's dope!" If she was with me, she would be doper than what she is now, 'cause that girl is a beast. Like, she don't what she is, and I know what that girl is and what that girl needs. DreamWorks--they don't know. I know what that girl need--that girl needs a producer behind her. You know what I'm saying? And what happened is, I have the record, and I heard the part where she does the little chant, and I took that part and made the song. And I said I wanted to get Ms. Jade and her to do the song. And my man Jay Brown was in the studio from Elektra, and he said, "Man, how would it be to get Nelly Furtado on a Missy remix?" I said I didn't know how it would turn out, 'cause what would she do? I already know what she was going to do for this record, but I didn't know what she was going to do for that record. So the next thing you know, she came to the studio two days later and did it. And I was like, "Oh, snap!" Turned out hot. I didn't know what they had planned...Missy just told her to go do what she was gonna do. And there it turned out to be.

LAUNCH: So you got a couple of things going: Beat Club Records, and the first artist is already going nuts. What made you finally decide to get out there in the label game?

TIMBALAND: You know what it is, man? It's like, a lot of times I hear a lot of people saying, "Tim quiet, it's hard for you to get something out of him." And it's the truth, because the whole thing is, the whole industry will destroy you, destroy your personality, destroy everything about you, and turn you into a monster that's really not you. And you gotta stay grounded--I'm real close to my family, I always go home to my Mom, get prayer and everything. So it keeps me grounded to Tim Mosley, not "Timbaland." So that's why I'm kinda just quiet and I just watch and observe and I be like, "When this person goes home, is this person really like this? Do they really talk like this, do you really dress like this, do you really talk to your mom that way, do you really talk to your friends that way?" And it's like, a lot of that was going on and I wasn't feeling it, and that's why I kept quiet, 'cause it seemed fake. But I felt like, with people biting your stuff, biting your beats, you need to speak up, you need to talk. And I was like, "In due time." So now that I got my label, I was like, "Now I gotta prove to people that Timbaland don't just do hit songs"--Missy, Ginuwine, and all the rest of them, you know, my camp, Aaliyah. You know, that's what made Timbaland; Timbaland was known for breaking artists. I said, "Well, I'm going to do it again and I'm going to shock the world, because I changed radio--people gotta understand this music has been going on for decades, and you can count on your hand how many have changed a music for a generation and for our generation. I am the only person to change music for the year of 2000. Nobody has done it like I done it. And then I done it by just making people small believers. Like a small room, like y'all just in a room and I say, "I'm gonna change radio. Watch." Yeah, right, whatever. I said, "I'm going to have everybody biting my beats, watch." And it came to pass--everybody bites. See, but the thing is now, they can't bite me, 'cause I'm too ahead. Like, I consider myself...not a genius, because when you have passion, you're not a genius, you just doing what you love. So if you a good journalist, and you can write so good, you don't think you the best journalist, you got passion for it, and that's what makes you the best at what you do. And I feel like that's what I do. I feel like nobody can beat me, and the reason that I say nobody can beat me doing what I do is because nobody had the passion that I do. You don't see me up here with no jewelry--sometimes you gotta take that stuff off and go back to your roots. And I come into the studio with Bubba and them, stinky, musty, grimy. Teeth not brushed. But we coming to grind, we on this ship together--if he fail, I fail. I ain't gonna say, "Timbaland can go back and do this or that." Because that do nothing for Timbaland. That's when they put it up on MTV.com, they didn't quote it right, when I said I'm tired of making hits. I'm not tired of making hits--I'm tired of making hits for other labels. You know what I'm saying? Not personal to the artist, but I know what's going on--they [label] pimp people. I'm tired of making hit records for them to ride. Tim making the hit songs, Tim doing this, Tim doing that, Tim got the hot record, Tim's the hot producer. I'm not the hot producer--I don't even consider myself a producer no more! I consider myself a composer. Like, that's my whole thing now--I know where to put it in place and where it go and just what's going to hit. I can tell you what's going to hit and what's not going to hit right now. It's like stocks, and right now my stock's like this, but it do have falls and slips. I ain't always right. But right now, everything I say in how to go about music works. And it's because I watch the streets, and I just don't listen to one type of music. I listen to a lot of alternative types of music: I listen to a lot of Chinese music, I listen to a lot of Asian music. It might surprise you, but I listen to a lot of Arabic music. And I don't care--music is music. The war and all that, they music is different and they scale is different. I can't not listen to they music because of what happened in the world. Everybody not like the terrorists who hijacked the plane, so I can't say, "Leave their music alone"--then I'd be just like them. They probably have the passion just like I have the passion. You know what I'm saying...we just two people that have the passion. And I listen to so many types of music; I don't be in this little type of world where everything's like this. Naw, in my car you'll find Staind, you'll find Puddle Of Mudd, you will find Nickelback. I mean, I can't ride to rap because it's just one pattern, but when I listen to stuff like Bjork and stuff from overseas that don't even get over here and I listen to the sounds and the notes they play, it makes Timbaland go somewhere that nobody thought of going.

LAUNCH: You're also working on your own record--is that record already done?

TIMBALAND: Yeah, I just gotta speak the truth about Indecent Proposal [with Magoo]. Indecent Proposal has been done for a year and a half. That's the thing...I mean, I love my brother Sebastian, who's another part of Beat Club, and he thinks that the best album I've ever done, that's the best work, I could never top that. Me probably, at the time, I would probably agree with him. But as time go on, I can't control what people put out. I can't control what my label wants to put out. They have they own agenda of what time it should be coming out. I can't control that, I don't have that type of power to say, "Put it out now." But now, to me, I've moved on. That don't excite me no more. If it do big numbers, great. But I will say it's an incredible album. It's the best-pieced album probably ever. Since The Chronic. You know what I'm saying...pieced together, the beats are just real hot. But to me, the Beat Club has just taken over my soul, and Magoo is my friend more than this industry stuff. Like, we're friends, so this stuff don't mean nothing. Like, he could always come with me and work for me, so we don't let this music get between our friendship. A lot of times, this music gets between people's friendship, but see, we're friends, so he won't mind me saying how I feel, because that's how he want me to do. I won't stop him from how he feel. The reality of it is that it's old to me, like if you wrote a story two years ago. That's the same thing with Ginuwine's "Pony." That song was four years old before it came out, but I had to get out of a situation before it came out. So I didn't like that record when it came out, but it was a new sound [to other people who hadn't heard it before]. So it's like when I do certain sounds, you gotta catch me then, because I'm going to move on to the next thing, and right now I'm moving on to the next thing, which is Beat Club. And Bubba's album was the first. But I feel like beat-wise I got a little bit better, and I feel like you will see it on [Bubba's] album. So right now, I can tell you how so far ahead of the game, I already have Bubba's next two singles for Bubba's next album, that I know. The tracks are so unbelievable that that's not gonna get old. I don't care if it never came out for three years, because nobody's doing this type of music we about to do. We about to show y'all country...not country, it's not even country...we about to take y'all from Nashville meeting hip-hop to hip-hop meeting rock 'n' roll. We gonna show y'all something totally different...ain't never been done in rap what we about to do. And the good thing about Bubba and about Beat Club, we have no boundaries. We're not set to this certain trend--we can do anything we want to do. Beat Club, it's just like Fight Club. It's just like a whole circle--[the Tyler Derden character in Fight Club] was a crazy dude and he just had his whole clique doing what he was doing. That's what Beat Club gonna do.

LAUNCH: So do you think Indecent Proposal will be your last album?

TIMBALAND: Yeah, man, that's it for me. I cannot do another Tim/Magoo album--not because of Magoo, but because of me. I'm a grown man. I'm like, 29. I'm not ashamed to say my age. I still got it. But I ain't gonna be 34, 35 years old, singing to 12-year-olds about this stuff, screwing and humping and talking about this girl stripping and that girl stripping. We be at radio stations and we get calls from 12-year-old girls talking about, "You can come over to my house." That's crazy. That's wild. I be like, "How old are you?" That's the first thing I ask. "Do your momma know you on this phone? Where's you momma at?" It's like, it just gets crazy. There's certain times when you just gotta be a grown man, a family man. I don't wanna be onstage doing a bunch of whoopty-whoo. I'd rather deal with my artists. I wanna be that sideman. I don't want to be the man like that no more. I can be the man by being in the back and playing the part still in the front. It makes you bigger than life. An artist don't make you bigger than life--being that person that can break artists can make you bigger than life. So that's how I look at it. But I will be doing a Beat Club compilation album and I will be doing an all beats album. I'm a call it, I'm talking to [director] Marc Klasfeld right now about doing it like The Wall. So it's gonna have video with the music. So it's gonna be just like The Wall by Pink Floyd. So it's gonna be just like that.

LAUNCH: Aren't you and Dr. Dre planning on working together?

TIMBALAND: Yeah, me and Dre were talking about this record called Chairman Of The Board, where the top producers pick the rappers that we want to rap on it. I think that would be hot. Like, I do five, he do five. Maybe from his Aftermath [record label], maybe we switch it up. I think it'll be real, real, real hot. But we need to talk in-depth, because he got a lot of stuff going on and I got a lot of stuff going on. But seem the thing is, I'm so hungry right now that I'm looking at it as I'm starting from scratch and working my way back up. So it's like right now, I've finished three albums in less than three months. So it's like, I'm back on the grind, I'm back to that first Missy album, I'm back to that grind where ain't nothing come out, the first Ginuwine album, the first time I worked with Aaliyah. I'm back on that grind.

LAUNCH: What was it like back then, working with Aaliyah?

TIMBALAND: Man, God bless her, rest her soul. I mean, that girl was so happy, man. We did One In A Million, me and Missy, 'cause I did this new style. I came with that new style back when I came out with "Pony" and Missy said, "This is a good time to give Aaliyah that new sound that you were doing back in the day." And I was like, "Yeah." And Missy wrote that record and I tell you, we the king of flows and hops. We know how to hop on a beat to make you move your shoulders in a certain way. And when we did that, Aaliyah, her face glowed so much. She was the happiest girl--we always rode together, we did a lot of stuff together. She always asked for advice on a lot of things and this time around, every song I put out on Aaliyah, like the first records, I never thought that I could beat "Are You That Somebody?" "Try Again" was just a fluke; it just came out of nowhere. And [with] "We Need A Resolution," I said, "Let me just start back and work my way back up," like I knew "Resolution" was going to be the one, because it's slow-paced and the songwriting was incredible. But I know that it wouldn't as big as those records, because of the tempo. Aaliyah's known for a dope tempo, fast tempo, uptempo records, and I knew this one was going to catch people for a loop, you know, for a minute. But once you caught on to the lyrics, it'll catch you. And I was going to come back with that record, but you know, we couldn't come back with that record because of the tragedy. So it's just like, man, her voice on my tracks was like a hummingbird. I'm not saying she was a Patti LaBelle, but her singing fit what I was doing.

LAUNCH: I understand that losing her has kind of changed your perspective on things.

TIMBALAND: Yeah. I mean, you know, it's hard, man, because I was close to they family, not just to her. You know, I just think about her mom and the dad and stuff like that. And you know, working with another female...I think that I can do it. I have this other female I'm about to sign, I think. I'm pretty sure I'm gonna sign her. Her name's Twanna from Atlanta, but she's not like Aaliyah. But she's makes me feel good like Aaliyah so that's kinda inspiring to have somebody like that, but it's still kinda hard. I doubt if I'll ever have that magic that I had with her, so like, I'm good with R&B because she was magic, as far as female vocalists.