Timbaland: Dead Ass? or Come-up?
- Katie Shoneff
- Apr 15, 2017
- 3 min read
Remember Timbaland? Me too. I miss him. A lot.
His last two albums (Shock Value and Shock Value II) were released in '07 and '09, but we haven't heard much solo material from him since. Those albums were gold. It's something special when a producer decides to make his own album, especially a legend like Timbaland, who has produced some of the dopest songs for artists like Jay-Z, UGK, and Nas, amongst so many other legends in the game. (Here's Timbaland and Jay-Z in the studio. At 1:50, you'll hear a familiar beat.)
I am by far the whitest girl you'll ever meet, but I grew up on rap music. The first rap song I ever heard was Death Row's Snoop and Dr. Dre on "Ain't Nothin but a G Thang" and I vividly remember rapping the entire song in the back seat of my moms Chevy Suburban at 7-years-old, to the laughs of my brother and his friends who were in high school at the time. And something I didn't realize as I was pretending to be a 7-year-old rap star was the masters behind the songs, like Timbaland.
Producers are the lifeline behind the success of so many artists. And Timbaland's track record started young. He started producing and performed when he hooked up with Pharrell (then called Magnum) and his boy Melvin "Magoo" Barcliff early on, and Magoo, of course, was tight with Pusha T and Malice of Clipse. Then Pharell, Magoo, and Tim, formed their group called S.B.I., standing for Surrounded by Idiots. Together they released an R&B demo in 1991 (you can listen to it here on YouTube) and it's pretty damn timeless. You can hear some of the first tracks produced by Timbaland, adding some real hip-hop beats to their R&B demo.
He took his first real producing job working on Ginuwine's first album "Ginuwine...the Bachelor" and Tim produced a large portion of the late (RIP) Aaliyah's "One in a Million". You can't forget Tim's unique ass beats like in Ginuwine's "Pony" or Aaliyah's "If Your Girl Only Knew". Just listen to the first 5-seconds of these songs, and tell me you don't know who Timbaland is.
And it seems he's stepped into an additional role, as a producer for the award winning show "Empire". He has proven his musical connects when he hooked up with Raphael Saadiq (one of my FAVORITE artists) and Jim Beanz (produced for Shakira, Jamie Foxx, Britney Spears...the list is endless) to produced a highly-acclaimed track record for the show.
Tim has been promising us a new studio album release, called "Opera Noir" which supposedly features Drake, Jay-Z, and James Fauntleroy (formerly Rihanna's cowriter), and initially set a release date in 2016, but we haven't seen anything yet. He again told us the album would be out in January of this year, but its creeping on May, and we still haven't heard more from Tim's way. He has mentioned in interviews that he will put the album out when it's ready, because, you can't rush greatness.
But my musical intuition is buzzing, especially after Tim posted a photo with his old friends Pharrell and Justin Timberlake on Twitter. And again, today, about an hour ago, Tim posted a photo of himself working hard in the studio. All I can say is, I can't wait to hear more Tim-produced beats. I miss them.
Here's proof to make you feel better:
TIMBAland and TIMBERlake.
Timbaland, Swizz, and Pharrell
Like the great Dr. Dre once said..."So just chill...to the next episode." but I am SO ready to put that thang down flip it and reverse it. (PS it's the 10 year anniversary of "Work It" produced by Missy and Timbaland.)
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