Sasha Frere-Jones on Timbaland and the Neptunes: “Rather than specializing in any single part of the songwriting process, the Virginians are creating their own idiosyncratic summations of everything that has worked in the last 20 years of pop. They're harvesters, not crop-burners, and their work is the product of lives lived through digital technology. If you can hear any music you want, all the time, chances are good you'll become an astute judge of what works and what doesn't. Digital technology also enables you to turn what you're hearing in your head into great recordings without waiting for humans, or history, to catch up with you.”
cnwb comments: “Interesting to hear that Timbaland was never a musician. As a non-musician myself, I've always been of the opinion that music is a language that can be learnt by rote through immersion in its logic [...] Learning to play music doesn't equate to a privileged listening position - its structures are familiar to us all, its melodies and rhythms and textures.”
