VH1 honors hip-hop legend Timbaland

When the productions of Timbaland hit the airwaves in the mid-'90s, nothing quite like them had been heard before.

Sure, elements of his style - the percolating bass-heavy bottom and flashy, stabbing synths - were familiar, but the outlandish way Timbaland layered the instrumentation made his music something of a revelation.

The unassuming guy from Hampton Roads crafted beats acclaimed around the world. Producing multiplatinum hits for the likes of Justin Timberlake, Nelly Furtado and, of course, his witty Portsmouth sidekick, Missy Elliott, Timbaland made millions.

Now, nearly 15 years after becoming an urban-pop juggernaut, he is being recognized as a trailblazer on VH1's "Hip Hop Honors: The Dirty South."

The cable network show, which has honored various aspects of the genre over the past seven years, airs Monday night.

Timbaland will be acknowledged with other Southern hip-hop figures, including Atlanta's Jermaine Dupri and Organized Noize and Miami's Luther "Luke" Campbell and 2 Live Crew.

The honor comes as Timbaland's profile has dipped.

His last album, 2009's "Shock Value II," is probably his weakest effort and spawned no smashes.

He hasn't joined forces with Elliott, hands-down his best collaborator, in seven years. In that time, he has worked with a cast of pop stars, from Madonna to Ashlee Simpson, but his latest productions lack the refreshing wit they once possessed.

Still, Timbaland is far from irrelevant, as imitations of his elastic, highly idiosyncratic beats still thicken the airwaves. The sleek oddity of his production style has become so ubiquitous that it's hard to recall just how fresh it sounded in the mid-'90s.

At the time, R&B and hip-hop were going through a commercial boom. The emergence of neo-soul - which evoked the romanticism of '70s R&B and braided it with production and lyrical elements of hip-hop - ushered in platinum-plus sales for Erykah Badu, D'Angelo and Maxwell.

In hip-hop, the silly - and ultimately deadly - East Coast-West Coast rivalry produced rap masterstrokes by Snoop Dogg, 2Pac and the Notorious B.I.G., making them unlikely pop superstars.

In the midst of all this came Timothy "DJ Timmy Tim" Mosley, a graduate of Salem High School in Virginia Beach.

In the early '90s, just a few years after he met and befriended Missy Elliott, Timbaland inched his way into the business with Elliott's help.

She was part of Sista, an all-girl singing group that had landed a deal with Swing Mob Records, a label owned by DeVante Swing of Jodeci. Elliott introduced Mosley to Swing, who later gave the producer his moniker, a play on Timberland, the construction boots.

With Swing, Timbaland did production work on Jodeci's 1995 hit album, "The Show, The After-Party, The Hotel."

Meanwhile, Sista's debut was shelved and the group disbanded. Elliott began writing hits for 702 and MC Lyte, while Timbaland produced remixes of the songs. His first full-production credit came in 1996 on "Ginuwine... The Bachelor," the double-platinum debut for the Washington, D.C., singer.

The next year, Timbaland and Elliott collaborated on "One in a Million," the excellent sophomore album by Aaliyah. The CD catapulted her to pop stardom and made Elliott and Timbaland the most talked-about urban production duo since Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis.

But Timbaland's most sterling production work came on Elliott's first four solo albums. The arrangement of her debut single, 1997's "Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)," is perhaps the purest crystallization of Timbaland's style: a rubbery bottom layered with his signature murmuring beneath stuttering rhythms. And the way he weaves the blues-suffused Ann Peebles sample through the mix gives the track a warm resonance.

Other gloriously odd productions that followed soon afterward, namely Aaliyah's "Are You That Somebody" and "Try Again," stand as some of the best hits of the era.

In the past three years, Timbaland has contributed to more than 20 albums, but his sparkling wit is missing. Maybe the formal recognition from VH1 will inspire him to sit back, listen to what he's done and try to top it.

And only Timbaland can do that.

Rashod Ollison, (757) 446-2732, rashod.ollison@pilotonline.com