“Without hesitation I have gone into the depth to see, if I really know how to swim”, says Nelly Furtado. “The part of me analyzing things too deeply, always relying with a ‘Oh no, what if I don’t make it?’ – I’ve entirely pushed aside this time”.
On her new album Loose (to be released June 9, 2006) Nelly had the courage to enter totally new terrain: she has written tons of rhymes – rapping them as well, she has worked with the ‘who-is-who’ of producers in the music industry, she has flirted with Spanish hip hop and finally she has given everything to create intuitive music. A perfect example for her new, absolutely intuitional approach is her first single “Maneater” – produced by Timbaland, the head producer of Loose, advancing to a producer legend long ago because of his work for Missy Elliott, Justin Timberlake, Aaliyah and many more.
Due to several gold- and (multiple!) platinum-awards (for her previous albums Folklore (2003) and Whoa, Nelly! (2000) repectively) as well as two top ten singles (“Powerless” and “Forca”) and a grammy for “Best Female Pop Vocal Performance” repectively – just to name a few of her achievements – growing self-confidence has been expected. However, to Nelly it was giving birth to her daughter that made her knock all of her precautions on the head in the end: “Motherhood makes you stop at nothing,” she explains.
“The album sounds incredibly young,” Furtado continues. “And I’m sure that’s because I now spend my life with a two-year old. I’ve also spent the whole day with her during the recording of the album, from morning to night, and afterwards I went to the studio – that’s where all the playful energy comes from. In the past I was only able to completely get loose on stage and now I’ve managed to put this drive on a record as well”.
“On this record you can make out how I let everything go and go to work absolutely loosened – ‘Promiscuous’ is a perfect example. I wrote the lyrics together with a rapper named Attitude from Alabama – something I’ve never done before. It felt tremendously liberating, for I had to play a role. The character – we jointly created – I then introduced into the video for the single”.
While Furtado talks about the recordings leading to Loose, she appears so fulfilled and happy that it’s hard to believe this statement: “Every time I start working on an album I tell myself `OK, this is it. After this album I’ll quit for good´”. But afterwards she explains: “Then it captivates me again and I exactly make the music that moves me at that time, and once again everything starts over again”.
She laid the foundation for Loose in something like a “hip hop workshop” (she says laughing), which she held with her MC-friend Jellystone (a.k.a. Jelleestone): “We wrote rhymes, taking them apart again, tried all kinds of styles with all kinds of different beats. Therewith the direction for the new album was set. I grew up with hip hop and r’n'b, in the past I’ve always ignored this aspect in my own sound though. But for Loose I knew, it had to be exactly that kind of sound”.
After starting with her longtime producers Track & Field, to Nelly it soon became clear that she wanted to work with many different well-known producers. “Working with new producers”, she compares, “is like clothes-shopping: You never know what will fit you until you give it a chance. And at times they see something in you, you maybe weren’t aware of yourself“. That’s why she traveled from Toronto to London with her daughter to work with Nellee Hooper, going to Los Angeles afterwards where Lester Mendez waited for her (Mendez had already produced “Te Busque”, Nelly’s hit duet with Juanes), then it was Rick Nowel’s turn (the co-producer of the uber-ballad “In God’s Hands”) and at last her trip ended in sunny Miami, where she met with hip hop masterminds Pharrell Williams, Scott Storch and finally Timbaland as well. “It felt like I’ve stopped at innumerable harbors until – at the end of the journey – I’ve finally seen this luxurious cruise liner in front of me taking me to the high seas”, Nelly believes today – whereas the luxurious cruise liner stands for no one less than Timbaland. If you ask her about the chemistry between the two of them, which has already worked well in Missy Elliott’s remix of “Get Ur Freak On” five years ago, she tells us the following: “It deals with a lot of love – it’s almost like a musical love affair. It doesn’t matter what he plays to me: I’m loving it. I want to record every song he shows me. I’ve always loved the sound of his productions”.
What Nelly nowadays names as the “swirl” of their collaboration – she’s probably talking about the magic center and pivotal point of events – happening right at the beginning of the recording of Loose: “We were spending the first night at the studio in Miami,” she remembers, “and we’ve just been in the middle of the perfect jam session. Nate Hill [who has also been involved in the song-writing] had programmed a heavy beat and the whole room was full of this incredible energy – almost like a voodoo-feeling! I’ve never been electrified by music like this before, it’s just been amazingly intense what happened there. The volume control had been pumped up to the maximum and suddenly something was smoking in the studio. I turned my head towards the loudspeaker and I saw flames coming out of it! Afterwards we’ve really been afraid of this song – we put it aside and didn’t work on the track for two weeks.”
Implied “crazy-voodoo-track” eventually became the first single “Maneater” (date of release May 26), of which she now says that “it took a complete life of its own. A fully own dynamic. You simply have to move to this song!” Therefore, “Maneater” isn’t just a clear highlight of the album Loose, but another prime example for Nelly’s new, danceable and hip hop influenced sound running like a thread through the whole album.
“In the studio we had that Eurythmics-thing going on,” she carries on. “I’ve called Tim ‘Dave’ the whole time and he called me ‘Annie’ consistently. Back in the days the Eurythmics used to have that dark keyboard-sound being poppy at the same time though. Their song ‘Here Comes The Rain Again’ for instance – I’m not even sure what it’s actually about – but I’m fascinated by it every time I hear it. ‘Say It Right’ gives me the exact same feeling: though I’ve written the song myself, I cannot exactly tell what the song is about. However, it sums up the feeling I had writing the song. And it also takes you to a whole new world, to another orbit.”
As she sums up Blondie, The Police, Talking Heads, Madonna and Prince as pathbreaking references while working on Loose, Furtado clarifies: “We took the rather surreal and theatrical elements of the eighties, the things that feel like a weird dream. The whole album is surrounded by this mysterious midnight-vibe, a vibe driven by one’s feelings. I want people to completely relax with my music and celebrate their animal drive in it.”
During the recording of Loose at the “hit factory” in Miami, Nelly repeatedly put herself in the position of a ‘super’ producer – including the loneliness. If you ask her whether she also enjoyed the Miami nightlife, she answers: “There was no reason to go to the clubs at all for the party took place at our studio. Timbaland has such a huge personality, he’s so amazing! He lives like a rock star. I think that producers are the new rock stars. They live in oversized houses, every day they drive another great car on their way to the studio, they are surrounded by beautiful women around-the-clock. People drop by, give him a bag full of money and say ‘Make a beat for it.’ It really was incredibly exciting to watch this kind of lifestyle.”
Working with Timbo also meant that she got to know all the artists Timbaland usually works with: Lil’ Wayne came by to ‘deliver’ the “best restyle of all-time” for a “Maneater” remix. Attitude was there – not only to co-write “Promiscuous”, but also to contribute a rap for “Afraid”. And even Chris Martin showed up in Miami to work with Nelly on the addictive “Why Do All Good Things Come To An End?”.
Certainly Nelly had been beside herself with joy, suddenly having so many new opportunities to collaborate. Anyway, she seems to be insatiable regarding new creative ways. One of her totally unexpected alterations is “No Hay Igual” – one of two Spanish songs on Loose. She gladly remembers her especially productive session with Pharrell Williams: “We’d just hung out in the studio, when Pharrell suddenly said, ‘You should do a reggaeton track’. I asked him what reggaeton actually was. So he played a few songs to me and I instantly got into it. If you ask me, reggaeton is the most exciting music at present. Also, because I was in Miami I spoke Spanish all the time. That’s why I finally tried to write something in this style. In the end it’s probably not a real reggaeton track; it’s rather my personal interpretation of this sound”.
The incredibly powerful “No Hay Igual” is yet another example for the “body music” running like a red thread through Loose. “My first two albums were very polished, very untouched”, Furtado points out. “They have something statistical – the songs are almost like a painting. This album though is completely intuitive. All the songs are dominated by the beat; they rev you, let the blood run through your veins. ‘Maneater’, for example, is such a song with a strong pulse. I can hardly wait to play the new songs live, for they leave you incredibly much freedom”.
“It’s certainly true that this album deals a lot with physical attraction, but at the same time there is that naive side – almost even a childish aspect resonating as well,” Nelly continues. “Some of the songs even remind me of my own childhood, when – at the age of 13 – I sat in my room [in Victoria, British Columbia] writing r&b ballads all day long. Somehow with this album I landed exactly where you can still talk about love in an entirely innocent way”.
She still exactly remembers how “Say It Right” came off:
“It was 3 o’clock in the morning and it was a little chilly in the studio. That’s why I put on a hoodie – and exactly this ‘putting on a hoodie’ wraps up the whole album: I’m wearing my hoodie again. I’m suddenly 14 again stealing away from my room at night and hanging out on the streets with the hip hop kids”.
This ‘Back to the future” approach also had an effect on the recording process: “One of the reasons why we’ve put these snippets of our conversations between the songs is that we wanted to take away this whole mysterious surrounding. I call it “reality audio”. I want the listeners to realize, that we just had jam-sessions, that we let ourselves go, that “loose energy” was important to us – just like in the past, when I was recording demos at 19. It’s not about abstract musicology. Each song has been mixed right away, directly – without remixing it over and over again. While in the past I sometimes had the feeling that the demos had perhaps even been better than the mixed tracks, we left everything the way it was this time. Just like the saying: ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’ ”
As a matter of fact, the direct spontaneousness during the jointly creative process represents the core of Loose. “This record clearly shows what I’m like if I let loose. I let myself go. It shows who I am, when I literally burst with creative energy,” Nelly finally states. “This is the artistic side of me. That’s what I live for and I’m incredibly thankful that I’m able to share this side of me with other people”.