Getting My Music Played By Timbaland

Back in late 2024 I submitted a couple of my songs to Timbaland’s music discovery platform—the “Timbo IDO.”

This came just a short time after also participating in a contest he held called the “Open Verse Challenge” where he posted a short instrumental snippet and asked artists to pen something down over it.

Prior to 2020, I hadn’t really been too familiar with Timbaland’s work.

I had heard of him of course, but it wasn’t until learning about him through his co-host Zayd that I really got put onto his work.

Zayd is the older brother of a close friend of mine.

When “Beatclub” was first getting launched back in 2020, his brother shared a link with the group chat, and from there I started regularly checking it out.

Backstory Behind Getting On Stream

I’m not always on social media, so I didn’t see that Tim had started shifting his focus toward artist discovery until just a few weeks before I had actually submitted to be featured on the stream.

I was aware that they were listening to beats, but this was the first time I had seen them specifically start working hands on with artists.

At the time I was stockpiling songs for an album called The Workshop EP, so when I decided to participate with the Timbo IDO I sent in a couple of unreleased songs from the project.

Getting Up On Stream

Zayd and Tim put me up at the very top of the show, which was honestly super cool. I was expecting to be waiting for quite a while, or to maybe not get a chance to be featured at all.

However, when I joined the session the first thing I noticed is that my camera was way zoomed in, and I couldn’t see Timbaland’s cam.

I spent most of the short time that I was on the broadcast trying to see whether I should be watching the live form of the stream or just keeping the “CamUp” tab open.

On top of that, I had just moved into a new home and was still getting the internet set up. At the time I was actually using my phone’s hotspot, which probably didn’t provide the best connection. That caused a few pauses on my part, but thankfully it didn’t seem to detract too much from the overall quality of the broadcast.

Getting Feedback

Tim was critical of my music. I’m sure a large part of that was the instrumental choices, which you can see him bring up right away when he heard that the beats still had tags on them.

However, he also provided a few gems that really motivated me from that point.

One of the main things he indicated was that despite those specific submissions not quite deserving a pass, he still felt that it was worth striving to be a great artist.

This was something he brought up specifically toward the end of our call.

A Conversation With Zayd

Back in 2020 I had a conversation with Zayd where I expressed some reservations about taking on a “celebrity” role within the hip hop community.

I told him that I was looking to take a more independent path, and at the time I was even leaning toward focusing primarily on writing and co-writing.

This was something Tim asked me about when on call for the Timbo IDO.

When he asked me if I was looking to be an artist, I had to genuinely take a pause for a moment to think about it.

Of course the answer was “Yes”.

When you’ve been avid about hip hop for as long as I have, being an artist is always at the forefront of why you do what you do.

However, for a long time it was something that I was still building myself up to feel ready for.

My experience with the Timbo IDO definitely helped light a fire under me to guide me in that direction.

Passing Up On A Shot At A Record Deal

A few months later toward the start of 2025 Timbaland announced that he was hosting a contest where three artists would be awarded cash prizes of up to $50,000 and a chance to be featured on a collaborative album with Tim himself.

The format for the contest was fairly straight forward. Submit three songs. Promote the contest to your followers on social media. The top contestants advance to the next round, and from there Timbaland’s panel of judges decide on who gets the final nod.

When I first saw this, my initial response was that this would work out great because I actually had stockpiled some new music since being on the IDO.

As soon as the calendar turned over to 2025 I got right to work, and was making some of my best music yet.

But after looking at the format, I realized the contest leaned heavily on social media reach..

I knew that there were so many artists out that have way bigger audiences on social media, and that regardless of whether or not my music was up-to-par quality wise I wouldn’t be able to outmatch that. I didn’t feel like dealing with the hassle of promoting myself for a contest that I knew I had a low shot of winning. So I didn’t submit.

Instead I just kept working throughout all of 2025, and recorded close to 50 songs by the end of the year.

Miami

Timbaland is based out of Miami which is about 2 hours south of where I currently reside.

My Grandfather actually lives in North Miami, and my mother has said that I may end up inheriting his apartment.

However, Miami is very expensive. Even just with that apartment alone the fees might be thousands a month.

The good news is that I have some time to build things up on my own in the meantime.

Regardless, the plan is to hang on to that property and keep it in the family, even if it ends up getting rented out for part of the year.

Over the years, I’m hopeful there will be more opportunities to connect with the Timbo IDO gang, whether online or in person.

In the meantime I’m just going to continue to do what I do independently.

At this point it’s just about putting the pieces together and letting the work speak for itself.

Thank You For Reading

As always, I give a big thank you for taking the time to read. I hope that you have enjoyed, and I look forward to seeing you on the next article!