Tim explained that someone hacked into his engineer’s e-mail and stole the files of Blueprint 3 songs “Venus vs. Mars” and “Off That,” the first to be leaked from the album. He said they hadn’t determined a destination for “Rumors,” though they thought it wasn’t right for Blueprint 3 or for Tim’s Shock Value II. They decided to leave it in the vault, but it somehow made its way onto the Internet last fall. The super-producer says the leak was a blatant attempt by an unknown mastermind trying to damage their relationship.
“I felt like, ‘What in the world? Who is trying to sabotage our friendship?’ ” Tim recalled. “That bothers me. I respect my friends, because I don’t got a lot of them, and he’s one of my friends in the music industry. I felt like, ‘I’ll remove myself. If people wanna play us against each other, I’ll bow out.’ We talk about personal stuff. I don’t want him to feel like he can’t talk to me about certain things. We both said to [each other] one day, we know we don’t need each other musically, but we are friends. I’m like, ‘I hope you realize that. But I want you to realize that me and you are like Dre and Snoop.’ Sometimes I don’t think he understands that. When we get together, we do make magic.”
Timbaland breaks down his side of the story on what happened with the first couple The Blueprint 3 leaks, as well as the “Rumors” joint with Keri Hilson and Jay that didn’t make the album. Shock Value II is in stores now. More on the story at MTV.