Timbaland has been shaping hip hop, R and B and pop music with inventive production since the mid 1990s. He has earned four Grammys, crafted unforgettable hits with Jay Z and Justin Timberlake, and guided artists such as Aaliyah and Missy Elliott. His newest protégée is a confident, pink haired Asian pop singer who first existed only in his mind.
With help from several creative partners and an assortment of multimedia tools, including the artificial intelligence powered music platform Suno, Timbaland built TaTa Taktumi entirely from scratch.
“I call it artist development, re engineered,” he said during a recent video call where he appeared alongside Zayd Portillo and Rocky Mudaliar, the partners working with him at his A I centered entertainment company, Stage Zero.
The company released TaTa’s debut track, “Glitch x Pulse,” in October and presented her as an “A I native pop artist.” The song carries the minimalist but haunting rhythm, unusual flow and futuristic polish that often appear in Timbaland’s earlier work. The process behind it, however, was created in a very different way.
Timbaland, now fifty three, began experimenting with A I based music programs a few years ago, and he became more invested as the technology advanced. Suno can create full songs from simple written prompts or spoken instructions. People can also upload their own recordings, and the software can construct an entire song or enhance an existing idea based on what they request. (Suno announced last fall that Timbaland had joined the company as a strategic adviser.)
“It is verbalizing music, taking whatever is in your head and just saying it,” he said. “Like, ‘This snare, I want it to have a fat bottom with 30 dBs of low end.’”
