Timbaland says that the “Oompa-Loompa” song from Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory served as the inspiration when he made the beat for Aaliyah’s iconic hit, “Are You That Somebody.” The legendary producer revealed the surprising anecdote during the 2023 Pop Conference at NYU’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music.
“I actually was trying to make the Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory beat from the ‘Oompa-Loompa’ song,” he said, before singing the hook from the track. “I took that rhythm and I listened back to it and I was like, ‘Man that’s a dope addition.’ That’s what I was trying to attempt, but in a hip-hop way.” He added: “I gotta thank Willy Wonka for that.”
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The rest of the panel included Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, and Take a Daytrip. The latter also admitted that part of Lil Nas X’s “Industry Baby” was inspired by a scene from Shrek 2. On a more serious note, Timbaland went further into detail about the production of “Are You That Somebody.”
“The baby part was me going through my sounds. I feel like life is full of music,” he began. “As soon as you wake up, hearing the trees, that’s music. Hearing the crickets, that’s music. I feel like everything that we do is music. When you come outside, listen to the trees, the birds, the crickets, the animals, they all make music. So that’s always been my thing because we didn’t have money when I was growing up, so how could you make music? And my thought was how do you get your gift out when you don’t have the necessary tools to do it? So I always pulled on nature, ’cause I pulled on buckets, spoons, cans to make my beats because I couldn’t afford a drum machine, so I never dialed away from nature, because nature molded who I am today. I always wanted to use nature to be in my songs, just things that we see every day, things that we hear every day.”
Revisit Aaliyah’s Classic “Are You That Somebody”
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