working with Timbaland

How did you connect with Timbaland ?

He sampled my song ’Jóga’ like 11 years ago, and said many times in the press that he really liked my song from 14 years ago called ’Venus as a Boy’. Actually, we recorded the string section in Bollywood for that, and he was really fascinated by that. We’ve met at parties and there has been this mutual admiration thing going on for years, and talk of doing stuff, but it never happened.

After doing two or three serious projects in a row, I was just like, ’Okay, where’s the fun ?’ I called him a year ago, and said, ’Let’s do something.’

What was it like working with him ?

That was very...very different. I work so much on my own, which I enjoy very much. 90% of every album is me editing on a computer or writing, walking outside writing melodies, or writing lyrics, or, as in the case of this album, doing brass arrangements, so it’s a lot of solitude there, which I love. But when it comes to collaborating, I’m really excited about leaving all that behind and just merging with somebody who is hopefully quite different from me.

We always felt, even though we’re really, really different, we sort of have this very small section, this sort of mutual ground, in a strange way. It was interesting to go into a studio with a person that you haven’t met that often.

The first time I met him, he was like, ’So what do you wanna do ? You wanna do something weird ? Or something like a hit ?’ And I’m like, ’How can you say that ?’ I could never work like that— sort of decide what it is before you even start. And I was like, ’I’m just curious where you and I meet, where is our natural...’ You know, if you put together this circle and this circle, where’s the natural overlap ?

He wanted to do a sort of ’"Cry Me a River’ kind of track, and I have a different luggage, I listen to 80s indie bands. That to me sounds like [sings] ’Take my Breath Away’. I love when he does rave shit, like really roots synthy stuff, and just humor. I think his stuff, especially with Missy Elliot, there’s a lot of humor there, and also taking the piss out of themselves, which is something that maybe people just don’t do much. It’s pretty rare.

pitchforkmedia, 03-19-07