Taking Sides: Timbaland vs. Neptunes

This dissertion doesn't hold true for the NERD album, incidentally.

I like my favourite Timbaland tracks better than anything I've heard by the Neptunes, but the Neptunes' star is most surely rising.

The cult-of-the-producer thing that hip-hop is importing from dance music, though, I'm not sure about - it does seem to be missing half the point: in producer-oriented hip-hop criticism you very rarely find much discussion of the MCing. Now Ned is upfront about that being the point of his enjoyment - fuck the MC and check out the sounds - but I'm reluctant to go too Neptunes-crazy and regretful of my Timbaland-focus because the voice IS so much of what I get out of their records. Their hip-hop ones, especially.

Not to mention there's something a bit distanced and almost elitist about producer-focus (you can't tell who the producer is hearing it on the radio) - thats why I like the fact that we're all getting excited about the Jay-Z record without knowing who's on the beats for most of it.

(How can you NOT like a bloated plutocrat with an ego the size of a spiral galaxy rapping over hiccuping easy listening? ;])

I think you were confusing Jay-Z with Richard Ashcroft there.

The difference with Jay-Z's new album is perhaps not so much that we don't know who the producers are, but rather that the force of his personality, and the album's cohesion as an artistic statement, make focusing the discussion around him a requirement.

Personally, while I certainly listen to the words of the MC and enjoy the personality they bring to the music, I find lyrics devillishly hard to write about.

This technique is personified by the Jadakiss debut, considering his rhymes are unmemorable when not embarrassing, and backed up by every single vogue-ish producer in the biz (except for Mannie Fresh) - it's a pretty good record too, but perhaps would have been terrible had it been made 5 or 6 years ago. I think that's partly because Timbaland and the Neptunes have such a strong vocal presence on their productions (and not just the heavily discussed "clever" sounds), whether it's Pharrell writing/singing most of the hooks, or Timbaland's "it's been a long time"/grunting/beatboxing stuff - along with the easily identifiable beats, it adds up to more personality/humanity than, ferinstance, Easy Mo Bee or DJ Clark Kent could muster, even tho they're accomplished producers (and no doubt they would've done the beats for Jadakiss 6 years ago). (And if it was an interesting MC, why the fuck would you want the producer's personality all over it? This is where you could call either of these producers on occasionally disrespecting the artist they're working with thru attention grabbing.)

I find it a lot easier to get bored of the Neptunes' over-familiar hooks rather than just the sounds - the Britney song sounds fresh to me precisely cuz it retains her bizzare ideas of what makes a vocal melody, and not like a bleeding Kelis tune. So umm, Timbaland wins cuz he's more fun.

This is a really fair point, and one I actually brought up on ILM like yesterday or some shit, the topic of "Why does pop suck live?" came up with Missy being one of the three artists singled out as sucking heinously at the VMAs. You can only do so much with so little and Missy has NO FUCKING BUSINESS being a performer. Perhaps if these producers had better "muses" this discussion would be completely mute.

BTW, agreement with (I think) Tim on the Jay-Z album: it has nothing to do with the producer (and quite frankly I've never thought of Jay- Z as being a producer act and never found the need to discuss his work in terms of who made it, unlike, say, Aaliyah or Kelis, but regardless), it's the force of him that makes it great.

I mean, she's simply the most irritating rapper I can think of. Quite frankly, she makes P. Diddy look genius in my eyes, and that's saying a shitload (although I have to give him severe props for the line about he ain't writing rhymes, he's writing checks in his new track - now that's fucking great). ALL OF HER RAPS USE EXACTLY THE SAME WORDS, SLIGHTLY MIXED UP. If I hear about her beep beeping in her fucking Jeep one more time, I will find her myself and murder her. And her voice! I have no clue how people around here listen to that bullshit.

Jay-Z is sorta like a chromium-plated death machine now, isn't he? It never rusts, it always delivers and you can't escape.

Ned is a god. I wish that was my review of The Blueprint.

Actually, another point of comparison for the sheer attitude throughout the album is Nick Cave in Ghosts of the Civil Dead where he roars out "HERE I AM, MOTHERFUCKER!!!" But again, mostly with "The Takeover" -- and he doesn't have to shout because it's so obvious. ;-)

Yeah, cos he started first...? I don't think Tim's done all that much bomb shit of late, but rep him fully anyway.

Hrm! This is innaresting, cos if it was true then, it isn't now. I don't know if it *was* true then, since you knew Tim's records by the wicky wicky been a long time bits.

It was just...*throws up hands* I mean, what WAS the point?

[three minute one-handed guitar solo]

Anyway, I'm intrigued to see that at the time I was starting to feel much more charitable towards the Neptunes, though that changed again. At this point a single or maybe a double disc comp could probably be made that I wouldn't mind, but it ain't Clones that's for damn sure (as for Timbaland, a box set a la the Jam/Lewis promo-only genius YES PLEASE).

Around page 6 he gets Timbaland and Pharrel to fite:
Timbaland struck up a relationship with the popular rapper Jay-Z, and the two subsequently made some of their best work together, including the 2000 Top 20 hit ''Big Pimpin'.''

''That's one of my biggest classics,'' Timbaland told me as we sat and talked in the studio. ''That record didn't sound like nothing else on the radio. I made about seven classics that you can still play to this day and still rock in the club. And I tell Pharrell, 'When you do that, that's when you get your veteran stripes.' I think he's got about three -- that Nelly song, ''Hot in Herre,'' Mystikal's ''Shake It Fast'' and Jay-Z's ''Give It to Me.'' I'm not talking about records that are hits, but records that still get played for years and years,'' Timbaland continued. ''I like to make it complex because that way, it stays around longer, and you can always listen to it. 'Are You That Somebody?' is still playing, 'Try Again' is still playing. Gotdang 'Cry Me a River' is phenomenal, wipes 'em out. 'Pony' I still hear, 'One in a Million' I still hear; they play it all day down here on the radio, all day radio airplay, 'Get Ur Freak On,' 'I Can't Stand the Rain,' they play 'Love 2 Love U,' that's the all-time classic. I could start naming, boy. I got title belts, you understand?''

Timbaland acknowledged his old bandmate and competitor with complicated praise. ''I love everything Pharrell does,'' he said. ''I like 'Clones' '' -- the album the Neptunes released last year under their own name -- ''but I did hear comments, people saying it's whack. I like that record no matter what, because I know all the hard work he put behind it.''

Timbaland professed to have a simple, unassailable philosophy. ''My thing is 'Who sold the most records?' '' he said. ''That's my friendly competition.'' And who sold the most records? ''Me. That's without a doubt. If you look at the charts, one year, I broke three artists, back to back, and they all sold at least 900,000 copies. Petey Pablo sold 900,000, 'Raise Up' was an anthem, and they still play it in the armies and over in Kuwait.''

When I told him Timbaland's theories, Williams shook his head vigorously. ''No way,'' he said. ''That's cancerous to my spirit. Knowing how many times a song got played on the radio? No. I'd much rather be in the studio, listening to a Burt Bacharach record, listening to chord progressions, studying them and teaching myself to go somewhere else. I want to pull energy from other worlds into my music. Life, love, science, religion, history, that's what I want to pull into my music. Let's face it -- you make a certain amount of money, and after that, no matter how much money you make, it all feels the same. The only real true joy that is new to me every day is discovering music. I don't know how Tim thinks about sales and then goes and makes a beat. That ain't my world. Tim's a genius, though.''

Ahem,

La la la la-la/warm it up
La la la la-la/the boys are waiting

La la la la-la/warm it up
La la la la-la/the boys are waiting

Quoting lyrics (which were no doubt written by Kelis) is hardly a refutation of Pharrell's point. He said he wants to pull those things into his music.

this is weird to think about now just cuz if I'm comparing old Timbaland to old pre-superstar Neptunes, Timbaland wins no question, but now I'd say Neptunes/Pharrell overall. Used to be more into the "quirky" aspects of Timbo's beats and ignored that with some of the tracks there's not much else there, especially sometime in the early-mid '00s/before his pop comeback his beats ring kinda hollow for me. Also this sounds purist or w/e but Pharrell can (could?) do stripped-down straight hip-hop tracks better than Timbo, although he's not generally aiming for that anyway.

Timbaland's most popular stuff & his best stuff overlaps for me in a way the Neptunes don't though, I think they got more interesting after '02 even though some bad ideas crept in too