Timbaland confesses working on Michael Jackson’s new LP was a “trying” experience.
The late King of Pop’s second posthumous album Xscape was released on May 13.
Timbaland executive produced the new offering and he says working on it was tough because all he thought of was dead friends while composing songs.
“This was very trying, not because it was just a Michael Jackson [album],” he told told MTV News. “It’s just me still dealing with some feelings of Aaliyah; because it’s still a death. I got Aaliyah, and I got Static [Major], and it makes you think like, ‘Who next?’ You start thinking crazy thoughts. And you just start to thank God for where you at in life.”
Timbaland admits he had several emotional breakdowns throughout the Xscape recording process.
“I forgot about Michael for a moment,” he recalled. “And then when I kept hearing his voice, it was like, I’m doing Michael Jackson. It got emotional. I had to tell my engineer to stop — we gotta go to something else. It took about a week process to really grasp what I’m doing. And once I grasped what I’m doing, I had to call my mom for prayer like, I need some help, I need some guidance on this, ’cause this is hard.”
Ultimately Timbaland learned a lot from the experience.
Now that the project is complete, the musician feels spiritually renewed.
“It really helped me deal with a lot of thoughts that always been in the back of my mind,” he said. “I dealt with ‘em, and I still deal with ‘em.”
