Timbaland has dominated the music scene, working with big names like Justin Timberlake, Missy Elliott and Dr. Dre (to name a few), but there's more to Timothy Mosley than creating beats that provide real Shock Value.
Next Tuesday, E!'s True Hollywood Story will feature a deeper side to the record producer, one that includes his suicidal thoughts and his confession of falling in love with a young R&B artist he took under his wing.
"This will be the last time I talk and I'm going back into hibernation," he says, before making some stunning revelations.
After Timbaland sings the praises of Elliott ("She was just super dope...she was God-sent; that was my sister") and Timberlake ("Me and Justin, it's the weirdest thing. We just say we're gonna kill them and then we kill them...We get together, we break bread and we spill out music. That's what we do"), he soon turns toward his complicated feelings toward another famous performer.
"When I first met Aaliyah—it time for the world to hear this, I'm gonna give a little secret—I was in love with her. I said, But I'm not…She just a baby, I'm old," Timbaland says. "I said to myself, 'I'm just gonna be her brother.' Oh man, I was fightin', I was fightin' a lot—a big war. But I loved Aaliyah."
He, of course, is referring to Aaliyah Dana Haughton, the soulful singer who signed a deal with Jive Records at age 12 and allegedly married R. Kelly at the age of 15, inspiring the song, "Age Ain't Nothin but a Number."
Aaliyah then collaborated with Timbaland and Missy Elliott for her second album, One in a Million. The "Try Again" singer became highly successful in the music biz and started to dip her toes in acting, starring in Queen of the Damned.
Tragically, in August 2001, Aaliyah died in a plane crash. She was just 22.
As if proclaiming your love for a younger woman so many years later wasn't intense enough, Timbaland's discussion turns to darker thoughts.
Back in 2003, confesses, Timbaland, "I was almost 400 pounds. Who wants to be a 400-pound black man? I'm looking in the mirror, my breast is bigger than a girl breast. And I was saying, ‘That ain't cool.' So I got very depressed, like suicidal depressed."
But he managed to pull through and is now happily married to his wife, Monique.
"It's probably hard to be married to me," he says. "It's not easy. I'm a musical genius. I'm weird, I do crazy things, it's not like the average norm. But I'm a loving guy."
For the rest of this interview, tune into E!'s True Hollywood Story, Tuesday at 9 p.m. ET/PT.