Timbaland continues to disappoint me

First clip I’ve seen of this interview was about RKxlly and separating the horrible person from the artist. It just struck a nerve with me because how close Timbaland was to Aaliyah and get he just seems to defend RKxlly.

Now to this clip of Aaliyah being mentioned with Beyonce. It seems he doesn’t give Aaliyah her flowers! Aaliyah was and is on an entire different level than Beyonce and the other artists mentioned.

Idk, just makes me lose respect or rather it’s making me not even want to hear Timbaland speak.

Timbaland Reveals “Oompa-Loompa” Beat Inspiration Behind Aaliyah’s “Are You That Somebody”

Source: PitchFork • 5/1/23

“I gotta thank Willy Wonka for that,” he said at the 2023 Pop Conference. He also discussed the iconic baby sample.

Timbaland sat down for a panel discussion tonight for the 2023 Pop Conference at NYU’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music. In a group that included Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, and Take a Daytrip, Timbaland took some time to discuss the creation of the classic “Are You That Somebody,” breaking down samples and inspirations that informed the song’s creation.

Appearing via video on a screen behind the other speakers, Timbaland listened to a play-through of “Are You That Somebody” and laughed at Take a Daytrip’s mention that a hook from Lil Nas X’s “Industry Baby” was inspired by a scene from Shrek 2. “I actually was trying to make the Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory beat from the ‘Oompa-Loompa’ song,” he said, before singing the hook from the Wonka original. “I took that rhythm and I listened back to it and I was like, ‘Man that’s a dope addition.’ That’s what I was trying to attempt, but in a hip-hop way.” He added: “I gotta thank Willy Wonka for that.”

He also discussed some of the individual components that went into the song, including a sampled single guitar chord from the Meters that he ultimately utilized for one of the song’s central melodies. He also discussed the iconic baby noise pulled from a ’60s sound effects record, which he called “the missing piece of the whole beat to me.”

“The baby part was me going through my sounds. I feel like life is full of music. As soon as you wake up, hearing the trees, that’s music. Hearing the crickets, that’s music. I feel like everything that we do is music. When you come outside, listen to the trees, the birds, the crickets, the animals, they all make music. So that’s always been my thing because we didn’t have money when I was growing up, so how could you make music? And my thought was how do you get your gift out when you don’t have the necessary tools to do it? So I always pulled on nature, ’cause I pulled on buckets, spoons, cans to make my beats because I couldn’t afford a drum machine, so I never dialed away from nature, because nature molded who I am today. I always wanted to use nature to be in my songs, just things that we see every day, things that we hear every day.

So I was going through my effects sounds, and I heard this baby. Was it a baby, was it a chicken, there was a cow, there was Godzilla, this whole row. And this baby came across, and it was laughing, and that [one sound] wasn’t the whole thing. It was like [imitates four consecutive baby giggles]. I got to that one part, and as soon as the beat came on, I just hit the button. I didn’t think it was gonna work. I was talking to Aaliyah from where she was sitting on the couch, and I just hit the button and it was in key. Everything was perfect. I put it in the song and she said, “Oh that’s so cute!”

Timbaland Recalls Making Aaliyah’s “Try Again” by Fooling Around On A Keyboard

Source: Conplex • 4/26/23

“Timbaland has revealed one of his biggest hit records, Aaliyah’s “Try Again,” was made by mistake.

During his sit-down conversation with the I AM Hip-Hop podcast, Timbo explained how playing around with his keyboard led to creating the hit 2001 record, which served as a bonus track off Aaliyah’s self-titled third and final album. It was also released as the lead single off the soundtrack to the 2000 film Romeo Must Die.

“I was playing with the keyboard and it was a mistake, and my engineer Jimmy Douglass caught it,” he said. “I said ‘Jimmy did you catch that lil rhythm?’ [and] he said ‘I sure did. So [after] he caught it and played it back, I put the beat on it. I said ‘Ooo chop it right there,’ and he chopped it right there.’”

The Virginia native also revealed the late Static Major wrote Aaliyah’s verse and that Jay-Z told him the record was a hit. However, it took Timbo some convincing as he wasn’t sure of the track’s success at the time. 

“When Jay-Z came in the studio he was like ‘Oh my God,’ and then I was like, ‘yeah we got one,’” Timbaland said.

Timbaland surely did have “one” with the song as it rose to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart, the first track to do so strictly off airplay as it wasn’t commercially released in the United States. It also peaked at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 Airplay, No. 3 on the Mainstream Top 40 and No. 4 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs charts.

If that weren’t enough, “Try Again” was also nominated for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance at the 43rd Annual Grammy Awards, and the accompanying Wayne Isham-directed music video won two MTV Video Music Awards in 2000.”

Full interview below.