Guides/A Riffiter guide
Albums Timbaland produced
The rhythmic genius who rewired R&B and pop: stuttering beats, strange sounds, and hits nobody else could have made.
Timbaland is an American producer and rapper whose off-kilter, percussive beats reshaped R&B and pop from the late 1990s onward. This guide collects the albums he produced, from Aaliyah's One in a Million to Justin Timberlake's FutureSex/LoveSounds.
Timbaland heard rhythm where no one else did, in beatboxed gasps, baby coos, sped-up loops and silence used as a drum. For a decade his beats were the most futuristic sound in pop, and he made stars by handing artists grooves nobody else could have imagined.
These are the albums built on that sound.
- 1
One in a Million
★ 4.0 · 1The album that announced Timbaland and Missy Elliott as the future of R&B. Cool, spacious and rhythmically strange, it sounded a decade ahead of 1996.
- 2
Ginuwine... The Bachelor
Be the first to rateHome to "Pony," one of Timbaland's first and weirdest hits, a slithering, synthetic groove that still sounds like the future.
- 3
Supa Dupa Fly
★ 3.8 · 3Timbaland produced Missy's debut in full, a landmark of avant-garde R&B and the start of one of pop's great creative partnerships.
- 4
Miss E ...So Addictive
★ 4.3 · 3The partnership at its peak, home to "Get Ur Freak On", a global hit built on a bhangra loop and pure rhythmic nerve.
- 5
Vol. 3... Life and Times of S. Carter
★ 2.9 · 5Timbaland produced "Big Pimpin'," the lavish, flute-driven single that became one of Jay-Z's signature songs.
- 6
Justified
★ 3.9 · 19Timbaland's productions, "Cry Me a River" chief among them, gave Timberlake's solo debut its edge and announced a defining partnership.
- 7
FutureSex/LoveSounds
★ 4.2 · 3Timbaland and Timberlake's masterpiece, sleek, percussive, future-facing pop that produced a string of number ones.
- 8
Loose
★ 4.0 · 5Timbaland reinvented a folk-pop singer as a dancefloor star, producing the blockbuster "Promiscuous" and "Maneater."
- 9
- 10
Shock Value
Be the first to rateHis own all-star album, a pop summit that turned the producer into a chart star in his own right.
Explore the sound
Artists in this guide
Lists with these albums
Read next
Gone, not finished: 19 albums that arrived a decade or more late
Ranked by how long the silence lasted, from Linda Perhacs' forty-four years down to Portishead's eleven.
Rock progressivo italiano: 22 albums, and most of these bands only got one
Italy's prog boom lasted about five years, produced a staggering number of records, and left a scene full of one-album bands.
The whole band was one person: 22 albums made alone
Wendy Carlos in a Manhattan apartment, Springsteen in a bedroom, Jane Remover recording guitar one string at a time. Records where a single player covered every part.
Congolese rumba and soukous: a 23-record canon, from Indépendance Cha Cha to the Kinshasa of now
Sixty-five years of dance music from both banks of the river, told through the bands that kept splitting up.
Got your own ranking? Build a list or tier of your own.