Timbaland Reflects On His Music Career In 'Emperor Of Sound'

WNYC | Nov 17, 2015

If you don’t know Timbaland by name, you’ve certainly heard his music. For two decades now, Timothy Mosley, who goes by Timbaland, has been producing some of music’s biggest stars, including Missy Elliot, Jay-Z, Madonna and both of Justin Timberlake’s solo albums.

Here & Now’s Jeremy Hobson speaks with one of popular music’s biggest producers about his life, his new memoir “The Emperor of Sound” and why he considers himself a musical genius.

Interview Highlights: Timbaland

What does it mean to be a producer on some of the most popular songs?

“It means to me I get to spread my joy to the world. Meaning I love music so I know how it makes me feel, so I wanted – when I produce for somebody else, I say ‘I wonder if the world gets the same feeling as I do.’ And evidently, it has worked for me because what I felt when I was doing it, they felt it too when I put it out.”

What did you listen to growing up that might have influenced your work?

“I listened to everything, but what influenced me? Just me. That’s a gift from God that I have. I just know music like Steve Jobs knows the computer and knows the vision of a small computer and know what he could do with it. I just know music and sound. It’s a God-given gift.”

“I just know music like Steve Jobs knows the computer.”

On his parents’ support

“I mean, when you see your child keep doing the same thing, you got to pay attention to that. I mean, you might not understand it, but you need to pay attention to it. And I thank God for them to allow me to keep doing what I’m doing and to go forward with my dreams. It was God’s blessing.”

Did you think you would make a living out of music?

“I wasn’t thinking about a living at the time. I just wanted to express my talent, and the living just came. I never looked at it ‘I’m going to make a lot of money,’ no.”

On the moment his mother lost her house

“I mean, we would just have a lot of faith, you know? It wasn’t about ‘Oh, I need to go work, and take care of my mom and move.’ Because you know at that time, my parents had gotten divorced. My mom was a hard worker and I didn’t look at it like I had to provide. I looked at it as I had to provide, just not her, but my whole family. So I knew that would come in time, but I was more focused on my craft.”

On the time he was shot in the neck in his hometown of Virginia Beach, Virginia

“I was at a football game. We used to meet at football games and any beef would happen at the football game. So he had a gun, he’s putting it up, and that’s when it went off. It went in sideways, but thank God I wasn’t facing him. I was to the side.”

Did you doubt you would move on with your music career after that?

“Yeah, because my arm was paralyzed for a while, so I didn’t know – put it this way: when it happened, no negativity was brought around me. You know what I’m saying? Like ‘oh, no, he might not be able to use his arm again,’ or ‘he might not be able to do this’ or ‘he might die.’ There was all good positive influence at that time.”

On Black Lives Matter and the events that have been unfolding around the nation

“I think I am music… I feel like I’ve birthed a lot of the sound that’s out today.”

“I think all lives matter. I mean not just black. I mean all lives matter. We’re living in a society where video games are becoming reality if you want to put it that way. So it’s like, you know, it’s a future. So I can’t predict, you know, anything or what’s going on. I just think that everything that we saw in movies and TV shows, and it’s actually happening now in real life.”

Do you think you’re a musical genius?

“That one I’m not going to be modest on: yes. I think I am music. You know, anything that’s dealing with music I feel like got to go through me, because I feel like I’ve birthed a lot of the sound that’s out today. It’s like 300 – you have me, Pharrell, Dr. Dre, Swizz, Kanye – and we all are kings in our own way. And I think that we have all changed music. It’s not saying ‘I have a hot beat.’ It’s like we came in and changed the sound, and the sound how people was listening to music. That’s more than putting out a record. That’s like captivating a culture and thus the genius part about what we do.”

How would you describe the sound you brought to the world that wasn’t there before?

“What I brought to the world is music is all around you. Animals, TV sounds, remote controls, people talking, even when you sleep – it’s a sound that can be used in a song. And now I try to show the world that. Use what’s around you. Be thankful what’s around you. Look at the flowers. Go outside and listen to the air blow. It’s a sound. It calms you.”

Book Excerpt: ‘The Emperor Of Sound’

By Timbaland with Veronica Chambers

Prelude: A Catalog of Sound

Bob Marley once said, “Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet.” I would paraphrase that to say, “Some people just hear noise, but for me the world is a catalog of sound.” Rain, in particular, has been a constant for me. I was three years old when Ann Peebles recorded her classic R & B hit “I Can’t Stand the Rain.” But that song has always been a cornerstone for me. As the story goes, it was 1973 and a stormy day in Memphis. Ann, who was then twenty-six, was on her way to a concert with her producing partner Don Bryant. Ann spat out, “I can’t stand the rain,” and Bryant, who was at the time a staff writer at Hi Records, knew immediately that the simple words—uttered with such force and frustration—could be a powerful metaphor about love gone wrong. The two musicians skipped the concert and went back to the studio to work on the song. They were joined there by a DJ named Bernie Miller and by midnight, the trio had written what they felt in their bones to be a hit song:

I can’t stand the rain against my window

Bringing back sweet memories

I can’t stand the rain against my window ’

Cause he ain’t here with me

Hey, window pane, tell me, do you remember

How sweet it used to be?

When we were together

Everything was so grand

Now that we’ve parted

There’s just a one sound that I just can’t stand

I can’t stand the rain . . .

[Youtube]

The “rain” in that song is a riff created on what, at the time, was a brand-new instrument: the electric timbale. That timbale, the love child of salsa music and the electric guitar of the modern era, gave the song a distinct opening. Before Ann even sings a word, we are there with her: sitting by a window in Memphis, listening to the rain, each drop a reminder of how lonely we are.

I used that song and a sample of rain in one of my early hits, “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly),” the debut single of my sister from another mother, Missy Elliott. The rain in my song was different. It was the soft rain of a summer afternoon in Virginia Beach. Ann Peebles is in the hook, singing about how she can’t stand the rain, but Missy doesn’t really mind it. She’s in her car, smoking spliffs, styling and profiling. Rain or shine, she’s supa dupa fly:

Beep beep, who got the keys to the Jeep?

V-r-rrrrrrrooooom!

I’m drivin’ to the beach

Top down, loud sounds, see my peeps

Give them pounds, now look who it be It be me.

Me, me and Timothy

Look like it’s bout to rain, what a shame

[Youtube]

Like the original “I Can’t Stand the Rain,” the rain symbolizes a breakup, but Missy is not crying about it. She’s got an umbrella, and she knows that in this and every relationship, Missy is the prize:

I feel the wind

Five six seven, eight nine ten

Begin, I sit on Hill’s like Lauryn

Until the rain starts, comin’ down, pourin’

Chill, I got my umbrella

My finger waves be dazed, they fall like Humpty

Chumpy, I break up with him before he dump me

To have me yes you lucky

Quincy Jones said, “Soon as it rains, get wet.” While “Supa Dupa Fly” was a dance song, “Cry Me a River,” which I wrote for Justin Timberlake, was a ballad. Justin was going through some things, some heartbreak, so we put our umbrellas down and let ourselves get drenched by it. The rain in that song comes down in sheets; it’s water hitting water, like the rain you hear in California when the heavens open and it pours down into the Pacific Ocean. In the video, we emphasized this by opening with the rain pouring down into a pool, so you could see it and hear it—water hitting water. The lyrics rose, like a river, to match the rain in the song. Without the rushing force of all that water, these would have been just empty, sentimental words:

You don’t have to say, what you did.

I already know, I found out from him.

Now there’s no chance, for you and me. There’ll never be.

And don’t it make you sad about it?

[Youtube]

In a business where people do a lot of talking and more than talking—a lot of bragging—I have distinguished myself by my ability to listen. Like most musicians, I live a very nocturnal life. Once I heard late-night talk show host Larry King say, “I remind myself each morning. Nothing I say this day will teach me anything. So if I’m going to learn, I must do it by listening.” I listen to the artists: who they’ve been, who they hope to be, how they’ve lived, and how it comes out in their music.

I listen to the way people talk—in the club on Saturday night and in the church on Sunday morning, in the elevator of big office buildings and in the line at food trucks when it’s lunchtime on a busy summer afternoon.

But perhaps most importantly, I listen to the world around me: the music that begins when the sun rises and the rhythms that don’t make themselves known until after dark. Anyone who has argued with someone they love knows the limits of language: twenty-six letters in the alphabet and you can only rearrange them in so many ways. But sound is infinite and anyone who has ever been soothed by a bar of music, felt their heart leap when a pianist plays a dozen notes, felt themselves smile at a guitar riff or tapped along to a drumbeat knows that there is a direct line between the acoustic universe and our hearts, a line that bypasses the brain and transmits truth, wisdom and meaning. The catalog of sound in my brain is my own creative Fort Knox. Each beat, each riff, each raindrop, each moan, each gurgle is priceless—a painter’s palette of possibility, a fortune beyond measure.