Timbaland Shaped the Sound of the Early 2000s (And He Knows It)
Synesthesia. It’s the experience of feeling one sense through another. It's also the ultimate summation of Timbaland's approach to music.
"When I look back at my songs, I look at the colors — I see my music as paintings" Timbaland says.
The concept of hearing colors may sound borderline hallucinatory at first, but those well-versed in Timbaland's lore know exactly what he means: “Certain songs have bright colors because the start of my career was very bright,” he explains.
The producer has spent a lot of time looking back at his musical archive lately, collaborating with vinyl record experts 12on12 on a limited-edition album featuring 12 songs he curated to reflect the vibrantly colored eras of his career. It starts with the uptempo club banger Give It To Me featuring Nelly Furtado and Justin Timberlake, and ends with the R&B ballad Apologize featuring OneRepublic.
Releasing on vinyl and limited to 400 numbered editions, the record includes artwork by Derek Fordjour. A celebrated artist and hip-hop aficionado, Fordjour translated Timbaland's auditory mural into a visual masterpiece for the cover of the record, set to be released during Miami Art Week (and available via the Highsnobiety Shop)
Timbaland was first drawn to Fordjour's art after being introduced to him by sports agent Rich Paul. "When I [first] saw his pieces, they hit my soul," Timbaland remembers, and he was taken aback (in the best way) by the raw vulnerability of Fordjour's artwork. "When I saw his paintings I saw a Black man putting his soul, his perspective on life into a painting that's so complex but so simple."
Timbaland's admiration for Fordjour's art goes beyond the visual. He was deeply moved by the parallels between their lives. "We kind of have similar walks of life, going through divorce and giving your all, and you're just left with your God-given talent and having to really just dive into your art," he says.
Fordjour’s 12on12 cover depicts a young Timbaland mixing on a turntable awash in a symphony of lucid hues. "What this [cover represents] for me is my whole childhood,” Timbaland explains. “You know, parents who work regular jobs, living in the hood, but having music for my escape which made me feel like I was the richest little kid in the world.”
"[Music] was my vortex, my own world. It kept depression away because I'd go to school, and life just didn't feel good to me. I wasn't good at school, books and all that stuff. The way I saw the world was different, so I just wanted to be trapped in my room with my headphones on."
This full submersion into his passion paid off with the producer's indisputable legacy. Big Pimpin', Apologize, Get Ur Freak On, and Sexy Back are more than just hit singles from his stacked resume — these songs permanently altered the existing status quo in music. "All of those songs were like a paradigm shift in music itself," he says.
Aaliyah's One in a Million was another industry-shifting record that put innovative production on the map. "That was the first time people started to pay attention, I believe, to beats outside of song. That was the start of a moment," he says.
The incorporation of unorthodox natural sounds is also how we got the iconic gurgling baby ad-lib in Aaliyah's "Are You That Somebody?" a sound still being dissected and discussed online more than 20 years later.
The reason Timbaland decided to add that iconic coo? It sounded like life, which, to him, is music in its purest form. "Like a bird or animal, or a baby — it's still a sound, and the baby sound was so unique."
With a career that has spanned over 30 years and more awards than he'd care to count (including 4 Grammy wins. Clock it!), Timbaland has witnessed the peaks and valleys of the music industry in a way the average person couldn't begin to fathom. So Y2K enthusiasts will be quite pleased to know that the 2000s is, by far, Timbaland's favorite era of music.
"The quality control was so high. I don't feel like the quality control is that high right now. It's all about content now and the music part is secondary, he says."This does not negate his optimism for the future of music, though, and there are some extraordinary up-and-coming talents Timbaland views as up next, including SAILORR, Tanner Adell, Shaboozey and Kevin Smiley.
"These are the up-and-coming artists that I think are the future of the next generation of music,” he says “And I just thank God that I'm picking it now. Five years from now, this will be dated and you'll be like, 'Yo Timb said that,'."
"Music evolves whether you like it or not. Everybody says, 'Oh, I don't like music today.' But there's so much music [out] right now that you can choose to digest what you do like. You haven’t gotta follow the trends. You can make trends. And that's the beauty of it."
