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"FacebookPinterest\n\nA FLAME CAME OUT OF THE SPEAKER AND ALMOST HIT THE ENGINEER IN THE HEAD\n\n An interview with Nelly Furtado\n\nTimbaland produced your third album, Loose. I think a lot of people were surprised when you teamed up with him, but the album turned out to be a huge success both commercially and creatively. Why do you think you guys worked so well together \n\n I think my career is all about unlikely collaborations, y'know. One day I'll do something with Timbaland, the next day I'll do something with Michael Bubl\u00E9. The two don't really seem to have any thread that holds them together, but I like to be the thread.\n\nThe first time I met Tim, ironically, or not so ironically, was because he wanted to sample my music\u2014a song called \"Baby Girl\" that I'd created with [producers] Track &amp;amp; Field. There's this whole vocal arrangement, that we spent hours on, with my voice totally layered, this very Brazilianinspired vocalpercussion riff that's a very big part of the song. He sampled that part of the song and created a whole song around it for one of his artists, Ms. Jade. And my label called me and said 'Hey, Timabland wants to sample you, but he wants you to come in and approve the track.' And I was like, 'Amazing,' because one of my musical dreams was to work with him.\n\nThis was, like, six years ago. So I went to the studio, and it was really like love at first sight. Musical love at first sight\u2014literally within two minutes of meeting him, I was in a vocal booth with headphones on, and I was singing. That never happens. And it was really pure and real. I sang a whole improv section for the end of the song, and I ended up singing the chorus for the song, and doing the video and everything.\n\nAnd y'know, since then, he was just a musical friend. We worked a couple more times in the studio, just doing remis and stuff. And we kinda lost touch for a while, like four years or something. And then when this album [Loose] came about, I started working with all kinds of producers\u2014I worked with Track &amp;amp; Field, I worked with Pharrell, I worked with Scott Storch in Miami. I had a bunch of tracks, I had some good songs, but then finally the label was like, 'You know what Tim wants to do a track with you, and we think you should do it.\"\n\nIt hadn't occurred to me. We'd always talked about doing an album together, but I guess we'd been putting it off. It's kinda what everybody expected after the first album\u2014that I'd put out a Tim album, like a hiphop/R&amp;amp;B album. I had showed my feathers a little bit, on different hiphop things I'd done with the Roots, and Jurassic 5 and Missy, and everyone was like, 'Okay, she'll go that way,' and I didn't, because I hate doing what people think I'm gonna do. So anyway, I flew to Miami. And it was a momentous occasion, cause I hadn't seen him in about four years, so when I walked in that studio it was like seeing an old friend, or when you go and see a relative you haven't seen in ages, and you've flown across the world or something. He's sitting there behind all these keyboards, cramped in the corner. And he was like, 'Hey\u2014let's make some music.' And that very same day, I just had this feeling in the pit of my stomach like something magical was gonna happen.\n\nHis cobeatmaker Nate Hills, his young prot\u00E9g\u00E9, also very talented, put up this beat, the beat for \"Maneater.\" It was like, a monster beat, and we started jamming, and it was like this special occasion for Tim, because he'd brought a guitar player in that day, and so the guitar player was there in the studio, and we just started jammin', jammin', jammin'\u2014this really, really intense jam, unlike anything I've ever been a part of. We were all on this wild ride.\n\nAnd just when we were thinking, \"Wow, this is crazy,\" riding this dark horse of a song, we start to smell smoke, and we look at the speaker. The glue had caught fire. A flame came out of the speaker and it almost hit the engineer in the head. We all stopped. It was like \"Holy shit, that was amazing.\" It freaked us out. Someone came and fid the speaker, but we actually never put that song back up that day. We moved on to other tracks, and we didn't get back to that song until two weeks later. That day I drove home, and my manager was like, \"So, what do you think Do you think this one's going to work, this collaboration\" And I was like, \"Don't talk to me. I don't want to talk about it, I don't want to jinx it.\" It was just too heavy, y'know\n\nDid you see the fact that the studio almost caught fire as a sign \n\n Oh, totally. It was great, because you always talk about how music can be so spiritual and so uplifting, and in this case I think we had made a pact with the devil to make a really good album. And I think most parents would agree, judging from my first single, \"Promiscuous.\"\n\nSo you wrote the whole album together in the studio \n\n Oh, yeah, totally. These songs came out of pure spontaneous moments, just hanging, just vibing. That's why I named the album Loose. When we did the album, we kind of approached it like we were a band. We had these fabulous dreams of actually starting a band. I felt like I was in a band\u2014like I was in Blondie or something. We decided to do a lot of this album in the mix room, just on the floor. I wasn't in an [isolation] booth writing it. We would all write and jam right in front of the board. We were all so passionate\u2014we wouldn't stop to eat our food, we'd just record late at night, and go home so tired.\n\nWhat was the process like Would he start by just throwing you a beat \n\n Yeah. He has, like, skeletons of beats sometimes, on his keyboard. And he'll have, like, twenty things, and he'll just play me stuff. He's the only producer where I have a melody for absolutely everything he plays me. He just inspires me on a really basic level, like a primal level. Everything he plays really inspires me. He'll play a beat, and I'll start singing, and I'll come up with a hook. He's very picky, so it's great for me. It's a very Pavlovian experience, because every time he didn't like something, he'd just kind of leave the room and go do something else. [laughs] So I learned very quickly to only come correct with my hooks.\n\nI totally know what you're talking about. When I was interviewing him, and he wasn't into a line of questioning, he'd sort of tune out. \n\n I know, I know! You gotta keep him interested. He's got a low attention span. But so do I. That's why we get along. It's kinda funny. Actually, though, certain songs weren't like that. Like \"Promiscuous\"\u2014people always assume I wrote that song, because I write all my other material, but that's the firstever song that I didn't really write that much of. I wrote maybe 50% of the lyrics, but the melody is all Tim. And the whole \"Promiscuous\" thing came out of Tim's dirty little mouth. [laughs] He didn't know what he meant when he said it. He didn't know what \"Promiscuous\" meant, isn't that funny He really only learned what it meant once it became a really big hit. He was like, \"Oh\u2014that's what that's about.\"\n\nHe just knew it was something dirty \n\n He just knew it was a sexy word. Tim's kinda all about\u2014when I say he's all about sex, I don't mean he's some kind of sexual fiend, but he's really a very visceral human being, very electric, very ofthisworld. I think he's extremely gifted. I think he's been abnormally blessed, by God, with a really special gift, to just really make people move. I always say it's like he's an extraterrestrial on the keyboards, because it's like he's beaming things in from outer space, but it's almost like he's beaming things in from the future, y'know He's always just five years ahead of everybody else, and that's just a fact, and that'll never change. It's just who he is\u2014it's a part of who he is. He's just not satisfied with mediocrity, he's not satisfied with being like everybody else. And he doesn't even have to study that hard to do that. It's just in him. Some people are natural forecasters of public taste, or natural forecasters of culture. They're just ahead of their time. And I think Tim was born that way, and he'll always be ahead of his time.\n\nWhen I tried to have the nutsandbolts music conversation with him, and talk about why he made certain choices, he didn't have that much to say. I got the sense that doesn't really intellectualize this stuff. \n\n Yeah, not at all. He's the opposite.\n\nIt's that directlinetoGod kind of musicmaking. \n\n It's funny, though, because it's so human. It's almost like his music really connects that world to fleshandbone humanity. And that's why this album of mine is the way it is. People are like, \"Oh, this is different. It's very sexual.\" And I was at a time, too, where I was just getting kind of comfortable with real life and making mistakes, and not being afraid of the darker side of things. And I think it was a perfect moment for him and I to make that album, because it was me just really letting go. I had to get on that horse and ride that wave. He taught me how to let go of thinking too much. Because I think the only difference between my new CDs and my old CD is really that in the past, I think I overintellectualized my music, and when I work with Tim it's impossible to overintellectualize, because you just can't do it. He's just such a good meter of realness that it just doesn't happen. He's the type of guy who, I'll be like, \"C'mon, Tim, let's bring in some musicians\"\u2014we brought in these wonderful Cuban guitar players, and we spent like five or six hours tracking this song, and he's like, \"Aww, it's cool, it's cool,\" and at the end he just erased everything. He liked it better the way it sounded without it! He knows what he likes.\n\nAnd you trust him on that \n\n Yeah, I do. You have to. You can't let your pride get in the way. That's why the album sounds so rough. The label was like, \"What's up with this mix It's so dirty. It sounds so raw and edgy. We don't like it. We need a more pristine mix,\" and I was like, \"No, that's not the point.\" The whole thing is sonics, the whole thing is sound. That's what Tim does. He doesn't do what everybody else does, y'know And that's the way to change popular culture, really. Do something different, and lead people this way or that way. He's the leader of the pack. It's uncanny.\n\nDid he work really fast on a lot of these songs Did they not take as long as some of the tracks you've done in the past \n\n Oh, yeah. I've got a great story, actually. Y'know how he had no idea about \"Promiscuous\" being a risqu\u00E9 word He had put up another beat, which ended up being a song called \"Do It.\" And I was sitting there in the hallway, writing the lyrics, and his beat was up, playing for like an hour, and I was like, \"Tim, this beat's so good. It's been on for an hour and I'm not sick of it.\" And he's like, \"Really What you got for it\" And I sang it to him, like, \"Oh, do it like you do it to me/Do it like you do it to me.\" And he's like \"Oh, I like it, but I don't know\u2014is it too risqu\u00E9 for, like, the TRLtype crowd\" [laughs] And again, this is after we did \"Promiscuous.\"\n\nPromiscuity is okay, but\u2026 \n\n \u2026you can't say \"Do it like you do it to me.\" [laughs]\n\nBEYOND \"GET YOUR FREAK ON\"\n\n Thirteen essential Timbaland tracks\u2014some underrated, all undeniable\n\nJodeci, \"Sweaty\"\n\n (Diary of a Mad Band, 1995)\n\n Production credit on this excellently priapic slow jam goes to Jodeci frontman Devante Swing, although Timbaland's fingerprints are all over it: Ticktickboom drum track, taffypulling bass, squelchy radio static.\n\nGinuwine, \"Pony\" \n\n (The Bachelor, 1996)\n\n Prime equestrian innuendo, over synthesized soul that growls and twitches like Yello's \"Oh Yeah\" on a fistful of 'ludes.\n\nMissy \"Misdemeanor\" Elliott featuring 702 and Magoo, \"Beep Me 911\" \n\n (Supa Dupa Fly, 1996)\n\n In Missy Elliott, Timbaland found an artist who could hit his zaniest offspeed pitches; here, he takes her dulcet R&amp;amp;B vocal and constructs a funhouse around it, making a beat out of birdsong and heavy breathing.\n\nTimbaland &amp;amp; Magoo, \"Luv 2 Luv U (Remix)\" \n\n (Welcome to Our World, 1997)\n\n The maestro raps\u2014competently!\u2014and pays sampled tribute to fellow rhythmic visionary James Brown, fashioning a hypnotic loop out of the chickenscratch guitar intro from the J.B.s' \"Gimme Some More.\"\n\nAaliyah, \"Are You That Somebody\" \n\n (Dr. Doolittle: The Album, 1998)\n\n The most sublimely avantgoofy single Timbaland produced for Aaliyah: An ode to the erotic allure of the question mark, with jagged clockworkfunk drums and additional vocals by a giggling baby.\n\nJayZ featuring U.G.K., \"Big Pimpin'\" \n\n (Volume 3: The Life and Times of S. Carter, 1999)\n\n The bobbing fluteandviolin melody\u2014vaguely Latin, vaguely Bollywood\u2014is actually an interpolation of \"Khosora,\" by the Egyptian crooner AbdelHalim Hafez. Known to his legions of fans as \"The Tan Nightingale,\" he died in 1977, never knowing he'd someday provide the hook for a hugely successful rap song by noted spenderofcheese Shawn Carter, known to his legions of fans as \"JayHova.\"\n\nDestiny's Child and Static, \"Say My Name (Timbaland Remix)\" \n\n (This is the Remix, 2001)\n\n Timbaland and frequent collaborator Steve \"Static\" Garrett\u2014who cowrote many of Aaliyah's hits\u2014strip out almost everything that made the original song a hit, even relegating Beyonc\u00E9's chorus to the fadeout. What's left is a triphop shadow reminiscent of the softer side of Massive Attack. Audacious!\n\nPetey Pablo, \"Raise Up\" \n\n (Diary of a Sinner: 1st Entry, 2001)\n\n Proof that Timbaland doesn't always bigfoot the artists he produces. This minorkey, chambercrunk track lays back, sensibly, giving North Carolina microphone fiend Pablo room to unleash his weirdly melodious bellow.\n\nBeck, \"Diamond Dogs\" \n\n (Music From Baz Luhrmann's Film 'Moulin Rouge', 2001)\n\n Timbaland supplies oxygentent atmosphere while Beck does Bowie doing William Burroughs; his deadpan pleasurebot delivery is the missing link between \"Sexx Laws\" and \"SexyBack.\"\n\nTweet featuring Missy Elliott, \"Oops (Oh My)\" \n\n (Southern Hummingbird, 2002)\n\n The song might be about selflove, or making out with the mirror, or outofbody experiences, but Timbaland's track\u2014both sultry and icesculpture austere\u2014makes it sound like a ghost story.\n\nKiley Dean, \"Kiss Me Like That\" \n\n (Simple Girl, 2003)\n\n Dean, a buttoncute Arkansas blonde who got her start as a Britney Spears backup singer, was one of the first artists signed to Timbaland's nowdefunct Beat Club label. Her debut album was never released, but iTunes has her first single (the metaTimbaland \"Make Me a Song\") and this superior Bside, a yearning girlypop sigh prettier than a Laguna Beach sunset.\n\nShawnna featuring Ludacris, \"Shake That Shit\" \n\n (Worth tha Weight, 2004)\n\n Some of Timbaland's best beats have showed up on records by artists you've never heard of. Take Shawnna, a toughtalking Li'l Kimpersonator from Ludacris' Disturbing Tha Peace crew, whose debut album left the peace mostly undisturbed despite this gem, which contains what may be the dopest oud sample in the history of rap.\n\nJustin Timberlake, \"LoveStoned\" \n\n (FutureSex/LoveSounds, 2006)\n\n Cool as \"SexyBack\" and \"My Love\" are, the best song on Justin's second album may be this one, if only for the impossibly cool moment just before the fiveminute mark where the disco string section drops out, replaced by chorused guitars evoking Interpol at their most moodily cosmopolitan."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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