Making his second appearance in less than two months, Timbaland stopped by Power 105's The Breakfast Club this morning for to talk in depth about the new FOX series EMPIRE, which premieres tonight. He also spoke on Missy Elliott, Jay Z, Justin Timberlake, Tink, Ginuwine, Petey Pablo, the Aaliyah Lifetime movie, how production has changed since he first started, the over saturation of beats and producers, raising our standards, how technology is overtaking everything, and more.
On how he got his start producing:
"Really Missy, kinda. What happened was, as a DJ... to me, if you didn't DJ you can't really be a producer. That's my opinion. What happened was people stopped making good beats, and I was like, 'I can't mix this!' And the music, as evolution has it, music is wack. So I was like, 'Maybe if I make my own beats...' I couldn't afford nothin', so my mom gave me this Casio keyboard where you could only sample one second, so you had to be creative on how to sample in a second. You know how crazy you gotta be? When you love music, you figure out how to make the best mixtape. That's how you make money. So you try to make the best mixtape because you had to pay them bills. The technology has gone up so much. [Back then] you had a lot of imagination. Everything we thought of what they should do, they doin' it now. Now what I had always wanted, they have it. But it's still complicated. The way I used to think it was still kind of simple."
On his relationship with Missy Elliott:
"Missy my sister. Wow. She's probably the hardest working girl in show business and the most difficult because Missy is meticulous about her music, meaning she will make me go through 100 beats before she might get one. It's not because of me, per se, it's just because of she know how she make her fans feel. She's a fun girl, and the beat has to have some element of that because she's visual. Sometimes now, living in this day and time, it's hard to adapt to the change. It's hard to figure out because some of your standards are from what is right. So with Missy, she keeps the same '90s standard, which I think is brilliant. But we just live in a society in the time of A.D.D. Missy was the first artist to ever rap and sing on one of my beats."
On his relationship with Jay Z:
"He's like a big brother. He's a mentor. Being with Jay, even though I didn't grow up with him, I can tell how he was as that guy in the streets. He's a very smart man. He's a true testament to don't judge a book by its cover. Just because I live in this building, and I hang around these people, I'm just as smart as you and your mama and your grandma. That might be the smartest man that I probably know, like as a black man in just the way he thinks and the way he sees music, the way he envisioned out his life. He used to pick me up back in the day in a Range Rover, like when I stayed on 62nd Street, and I'd listen to him talk. I'm like, this guy's very smart, 'cause you know I ain't as smart as him. I was like wow, you sure you from [around here]?
On his relationship with Justin Timberlake:
"All these people are like my brothers. Justin -- I was just with him last night -- what we have is so magical. It changes everything. It feels like to the world that I do a lot of pop, but I really don't. I really only do one, but his music and what we do is so powerful it feels like I do everything. But really, if you notice, I haven't done anybody outside of him as a male, as a white male, because what's the point. He's my friend. He's not an industry guy, he's my friend. I felt like I met him the same time when I met Missy. He was around me at the same time like, 'Tim come on let's create this music' and trying to get a deal. I don't even look at him like the guy on stage. I look at him like, 'Wow, he really did it.' It felt like we grew up together, for real. We both from the South. Our moms know each other. We do a lot of family stuff. His grandfather died -- I was there. It's beyond music. So when the music happens, to us, it's a natural, magical thing.
On who brings out the best in him as a producer:
"I think all those people that we just named. They are great with me and without me because they are great people and they are brilliant people and they are wonderful people and they deserve the best as a person. If you met Jay, Justin, Missy, they've never been disrespectful. They carry themselves as honorable people. To me, that makes you great, just having a great spirit and knowing that you're not always right and you can accept being wrong and give other people advice. When I got out of line, they was the ones that helped me. Everybody lose it, but we all is there to help each other, like, 'Yo, you trippin.' That's the beauty of being a great person, when you can tell me, 'Tim, you too cocky right now,' and you can tell I'm like, 'Damn, you for real? Why you think so?' That's what makes you great, when you can accept criticism."
On following radio trends:
"I can't lie. I have [followed trends before] and maybe that's why it didn't work because I have followed and those songs didn't work. Like we put out a Missy record before, and it sounded a little dated. Sometimes you need a reality check. And the reality was: stop trying to follow and just figure you out. You do have to follow a little bit because if you're not current and you're not... like me I'm not a beat producer, I'm a music producer. I don't go and just do beats for everybody. If I'm not doing anything for four or five years, which you gon' think? People thought, 'He ain't got it, don't worry about checking for him' -- the industry, not so much the world, but the industry. But then when I came back out, it's like we changed radio again. So to that question. If I'm not in it, and I'm not active, I see what's going on, and I take the thing people love most, which I think what people love today [is] bass. So I take bass lines like, 'Oh that's how y'all flippin it?' Oh let me show you how I did it in 1994, and I'll pull out the old record books. 'Oh, this what we going back to? All right, let me show you how to do it 2016 way.' [Back when Timbaland was on the radio all the time] I think I was kind of brainwashed by just label and my biggest thing I wanted...I always had urban, urban always been my main supporter, but I felt like I wanted to take over the world. With me and Justin, we did, and with Jay and stuff I did with Bey. We took over the world because I felt like what I wanted to do was cross over the pop side but not really change in me, and it did work. But I still kept that black in it, that umph in it. It's taking all of what everyone likes and putting it into one. It seems easy, but it's the hardest thing ever."
On his involvement in EMPIRE:
"It's a little trying because it's the first time working with FOX, and FOX is one of the greatest networks. A lot of people have their complaints about certain things, but hey, you can't complain when they are trying to make a change. Look what they're doing -- they're giving us a shot. It's a marriage. I feel like if this show is a hit, we got a second season and a third season. I feel like the first season was more of me being the executive producer. I had to really oversee it. So it taught me [how to delegate]. So that was a little different because I'm so much of a hands-on person. Now that I'm at the end of the show, I'm learning how TV shows work. I feel like as we go along, just like in any business, your first is not your top. Sometimes it might take a year or two to get to the crème de la crème. I feel like as we get more and more into the episodes, I think when we get to season two, I feel like that's when you're going to really see the music. Because right now you're going to see the drama of a woman being used and a man becoming very powerful."
On how his life is similar to the show:
"It's where I'm going to be tomorrow, meaning like I feel like I'm building an empire. Like I figured life out in a different way. You know, as men, we sit down like we figured it out. Some people figured it out more than others. Some people figured it out at 27. It so happened I figured it out now. I feel like what I'm building, I don't want to be that guy on stage like that all the time. I wanna be in the back and really be like Lucious and really run an empire, starting with my young artists and building them up and just keeping music alive. So I felt like the TV show kind of resembles what I'm trying to do for real."
On whether he wants his kids to be in the music business:
"You know, it's a job. I know the business is corrupt, but isn't everything in the world? Don't you think everything has its bad points? Every job has it's bad points. I just want what's best for them. Whatever their heart desires, that's what they should do. I don't want to encourage it because I want it to come naturally. I want to see what's their gift. My daughter loves to sing but she says she wants to be a teacher."
On his relationship with Tink:
"Tink is somebody that God blessed me with, that's the best way to put it. She's a girl from Chicago that, she really is to me, the way she grew up, it reminds me of if she was Missy's cousin back in the day. Her talent is just not normal. It's like we forget how old we were when we came up, we forget we was that young. What she brought out of me was appreciating life more and what God has in store for you. Like, your chapter is never over unless he say it's over. So what she has done has inspired me because she's so smart in how she pick music and how she arrange music. I've never seen somebody 19 do that. I don't have to tell her to move that note; she's telling me to move that sound, put that sound right there. Imma tell you the illest thing that just happened recently, we was together and we was all talking about Lil Kim, and she was like, 'I know Lil Kim, but I don't know Lil Kim,' and I was like, 'What!?' So I played Lil Kim 'Queen Bee.' That girl had a smile on her face, and it felt so good to introduce her to something that got me movin' at that [age]. She's like a sponge. She just wanna study it. We did this song called 'In the Morning' and she said, 'Watch this. I'm gonna kill them on this one.' She never ceases to amaze me.
Watch the full interview, and let us know what you think in the comment section!
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