Like, if my Indian Father were to have approached a racist caricature artist in the 1980s and said “give me the usual,” I’m almost certain the guy would have depicted him as a snake charmer. It’s not that snake charming represents an inherently harmful stereotype to Indian people, it just feels like an incredibly dated caricature. In any case, right from the beginning, the video is super racist. It seems like a strange choice for the video, as if Timbaland and Magoo were trying to trick the audience into thinking that they hit the studio with a real-life, snake-charming session player to gain additional legitimacy, but overestimated just how much currency this would be worth. The video opens up on a Snake Charmer, whose hypnotic melody is evidently supposed to be providing the backdrop to the song, while simultaneously coercing a young woman to emerge from a ceramic pot. Even Timbaland, who evidently wrote, produced, and performed this song, has probably purged it from his memory. Having peaked at number 73 on the US R&B charts, I imagine that the only people who remember this song are myself and Magoo. To begin, I should explain that the reason you don’t remember this song is because it wasn’t a hit. Lacking the time, determination, and resources to try and back my hypothesis by gathering quantitative data, I’ll do the next best thing and prove how apathetic society was to the issue of cultural appropriation just one decade ago by examining Timbaland and Magoo’s unlikely 2003 single, “Indian Flute” I’m not saying that the idea wasn’t out there and discussed widely by a minority of more-aware people, but it definitely wasn’t something I would have spoken about drunk at a party with a group of complete strangers (something I did this past weekend). More than just my age though, I’d venture that this blissful lack of awareness was allowed to persist because the issue of cultural appropriation had yet to really enter the broader cultural discourse. government uses racist sentencing laws to bolster profits of a private prison system AND WHITE PEOPLE STOLE JAZZ?” I can’t remember exactly how it happened in my case, but I imagine the revelation sounded a bit like this: “So, let me get this straight, the U.S. One fine day, we all grow up and learn that there are straight up levels to this marginalization shit. It’s a natural progression in the life of every young liberal, it seems.
I’d barely even begun to process the viscerally affecting, overt details. I think back to where I was six years ago and I just know there was no way I was tuned in enough to pick up on the subtle details of racial oppression. 24 years old now, this may just be a function of my age. Not a time before cultures were appropriated, but certainly a time before cultural appropriation, the concept, became embedded into society’s general consciousness. In the spirit of such wistful reconfigurations, we present 10 Beats Timbaland Should've Given to Someone Other Than Magoo, in which we cast Jay Z, Da Brat, Twista, and DMX instead.It seems strange to say in a cultural climate where traffic to Iggy Azalea think pieces makes up 12% of the Internet’s bandwidth (not confirmed), but I feel like I can remember a time before cultural appropriation. In fact, certain tracks get me thinking about specific rappers and singers who might've made hits of what are otherwise Timbaland deep cuts. I listen to old Timbaland and Magoo tracks and can't help but wonder if bigger, better headliners might've given Timmy's tracks the airplay they deserved. Tink will make a way for herself, I hope, lest Timbaland's history repeat itself as prelude to #WhereMagoo Skillz, a capable ghostwriter, never caught a mainstream stride, nor did Timbaland's ever-aspiring sidekick, Magoo, who wasted many an A-list rap feature.
While his work with Aaliyah, Missy Elliott, and Ginuwine is platinum-certified, Timbaland's conventional rapper upstarts tend to languish. Timbaland, however, has mastered pop while lately bungling his hip-hop bona fides, hewing closer to Darkchild than to Dr. In Pharrell's case, this constant creative flux has gone rather smoothly, punctuated by rebellious experimentation via his and Chad Hugo's Neptunes side project, N.E.R.D. native Pharrell, has journeyed back and forth between bouncy, idiosyncratic hip-hop production and dancefloor pop. Since the late '90s, Timbaland, like fellow V.A.
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