An excellent article in the NY Times Mag on Timbaland and the Neptunes. My favorite bit:

”The best music right now is country music,” he went on. ”The old country music, the old bluegrass stuff — the lyrics in that stuff are incredible. And the damn melodies? Think about Bonnie Raitt. She’s country, right? She made the illest song ever, ‘I Can’t Make You Love Me.’ ” He sang me a line: ”Turn down the lights, turn down the bed/Turn down these voices inside my head.”

Timbaland also thinks Pat Benatar’s ”Love Is a Battlefield” is the ”illest song ever,” and he adores old hits by Men at Work and the Human League. ”Eighties music is music to me,” he said. ”Those are records that make you feel good, you know? I’m tired of stuff now, even stuff that I do. Coldplay and Radiohead are the illest groups to me. That’s music. Norah Jones is music. I love real music that I can play and never get tired of. The stuff I don’t get tired of is the stuff that’s musical.”