Timbaland - The Emperor of Sound: A Memoir

B ob 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 Cant 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 cant stand the rain, and Bryant, who was at the time a staff writer at Hi Records, knew immediately that the simple wordsuttered with such force and frustrationcould 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 cant stand the rain against my window

Bringing back sweet memories

I cant stand the rain against my window

Cause he aint here with me

Hey, windowpane, tell me, do you remember

How sweet it used to be?

When we were together

Everything was so grand

Now that weve parted

Theres just a one sound that I just cant stand

I cant stand the rain...

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 cant stand the rain, but Missy doesnt really mind it. Shes in her car, smoking spliffs, styling and profiling. Rain or shine, shes supa dupa fly:

Beep beep, who got the keys to the Jeep?

V-r-rrrrrrrooooom!

Im 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 its bout to rain, what a shame

Like the original I Cant Stand the Rain, the rain symbolizes a breakup, but Missy is not crying about it. Shes 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 Hills 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; its 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 itwater 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 dont have to say, what you did.

I already know, I found out from him.

Now theres no chance, for you and me. Therell never be.

And dont it make you sad about it?

In a business where people do a lot of talking and more than talkinga lot of braggingI 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 Im going to learn, I must do it by listening. I listen to the artists: who theyve been, who they hope to be, how theyve lived, and how it comes out in their music.

I listen to the way people talkin 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 its 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 dont 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 pricelessa painters palette of possibility, a fortune beyond measure.