Timbaland Recruits V Bozeman (of "Empire") For New Single "Smile": Listen Now
Timbaland’s “Opera Noir” album – his first studio release since 2009’s “Shock Value II” – is almost upon us. It will be released at a non-revealed date yet later in 2015 on Interscope Records. However, the “Opera Noir” ERA has already begun. It did so today, August 11th, actually, with the premiere of the lead single “Smile” featuring the fierce V Bozeman, whom you may recognize from the hit series “Empire”. “Smile” will be out on iTunes later this month.
Timbaland throws it back some in “Smile”. It’s a feel good, early 2000s-inspired R&B track. It’s a song about love, and being there for each other. The whole theme of “Smile” revolves around the romantic idea of: “if you smile, I smile”. It’s four minutes long and all of the heavy, beautiful singing is carried out by V Bozeman (whose fierce shaved hairdo she should never change) – she’s got mad vocals – while Timbaland gets a few lines here and there and he also helps V Bozemand out with some harmonies. Timbaland SINGS in “Smile”? Yeah… he ain’t rapping or ‘talking’ anymore, he’s singing now. I guess that was his objective for the “Opera Noir” album; to push himself forward and the test of the waters of real singing. Nevertheless, evidently, he ain’t ‘singing’ without help. Thanks to the magic of music editing software, vocoder and auto-tune, he ‘surprisingly’ sings every note in pitch and he actually sounds good in the harmonies he does with V Bozeman, something that, of course, wouldn’t be possible if Timbo were singing au natural.
The song is real nice, and feel-good, I like the R&B throwback sound, and I don’t see any reason why rhythmic radios wouldn’t be supporting this.