Timbaland Reveals “Oompa-Loompa” Beat Inspiration Behind Aaliyah’s “Are You That Somebody”

The baby part was me going through my sounds. I feel like life is full of music. 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.

So I was going through my effects sounds, and I heard this baby. Was it a baby, was it a chicken, there was a cow, there was Godzilla, this whole row. And this baby came across, and it was laughing, and that [one sound] wasn’t the whole thing. It was like [imitates four consecutive baby giggles]. I got to that one part, and as soon as the beat came on, I just hit the button. I didn’t think it was gonna work. I was talking to Aaliyah from where she was sitting on the couch, and I just hit the button and it was in key. Everything was perfect. I put it in the song and she said, “Oh that’s so cute!”