Timbaland: Producer Extraordinaire

You can give Timbaland props for many things, whether it's his sense of rhythm or his production talents, or his attraction to working with some of the biggest names in all of music. Whatever you say about the man named after boots, you have to say that Timbaland sure has his stamp on millions upon millions of sold records. And that says a lot.

What also says a lot about him is how Timbaland got his start. Back in the day, in his home state of Virginia, he was known as DJ Tiny Tim, or DJ Timmy Tim, based on his real name Timothy Mosley. It was doing production there that he was discovered by Missy Elliott, who immediately saw the talent in him. She brought him with her to New York, where they both got signed to Swing Mob records.

It was with Swing Mob and one of the label's big stars that Timbaland was allowed to shine, and succeed. Who? Where? When? Let me set the mood. The year was 1996, and a rapper by the name of Ginuwine was putting out his first album called "Ginuwine, the Bachelor." Timbaland got the role of producer, but many Timbaland lyrics also made it into the songs. The Ginuwine album was a huge hit.

So Was Timbaland

Soon after the work with Ginuwine, Timbaland and Missy got called to work with the now deceased hit starlet Aaliyah. She was putting together her second album, called "One in a Million. Both Missy and Timbaland wrote some lyrics for her, and produced the tracks. The record sold more than 2 million. How's that for success?

If you want to listen to Timbaland's vintage stuff, though, start pulling up some of the work he did for Jay Z, like "Big Pimpin" with the whirling Asian-sounding, thumping background music, or Missy's hit "Get Ur Freak On." He also did some serious production work for Ludacris, Beck, and Aaliyah during this turn of the century time (turn of the millennium too!). With all this success, Timbaland would get his own imprint called Beat Club.

But one of the things that set him back around this time was the death of Aaliyah, who turned out to be more a friend with whom he had a deep emotional bond to than just a colleague. It is said that after her death in Central America, that Timbaland stopped producing for a while, stopped communicating with his fans.

Back and Bigger

But by 2003, he was back producing for Tweet, Missy again, as well as Justin Timberlake. He even did work with LL Cool J and Jay Z, all of which you have probably heard. He even got into international work, doing production for a Japanese star named Utada Hikaru. And he had a hand in the rise of success of female artist Nelly Furtado. And he did work with Madonna's new album "Hard Candy." Yes, that Madonna.

Where does such a producer go next? Into the great future, that's where. He will be producing an album made solely for a cell phone company, to be distributed on that cell phone company's multimedia platform. He is also developing a new Timbaland video game, much like Guitar Hero, in which the player can mix his or her own music.

From Timbaland to Hip Hop Music