Timbaland has revealed that the beat for Aaliyah‘s “Try Again” was accidentally created. During the latest episode of the I AM HIP-HOP podcast, Timbo disclosed he stumbled upon the skeleton for the icon‘s hit single after fooling around on the keyboard. 

“I was playing with this keyboard,” he began. “And it was a mistake, and my engineer Jimmy Douglass caught it. I said, ‘Jimmy did you catch that lil rhythm?, [and] he said, ‘I sure did. So [after] he caught it and played it back, I put the beat on it. I said, ‘Ooo, chop it right there,’ and he chopped it right there.”

As he recalled the happy accident, the Virginia native detailed how the late Static Major penned the cut. Tim then revealed that the OG version of the song also sounded “too preachy” before revisions were made. Jay-Z was the first to tell him it was a hit.

“When Jay-Z came in the studio, he was like, ‘Oh my God,’ and that’s when I was like, ‘Yeah, we got one,'” he said with a smirk. 

In the same interview, the GRAMMY award-winning producer explained how he discovering Ludacris. “I was the one who found Ludacris,” he asserted. “Because Ludacris was working in the radio station, and I was like, ‘Hey, ain’t nobody sign you? What’s going on here?’ [He was like], ‘Nah man.'”

“Then he came down to Virginia, and we did ‘Phat Rabbit,’ and from there, labels started calling. He asked me one time, ‘Would you sign to Def Jam or Elektra?’ I said, ‘Man, you better go to Def Jam. And I didn’t know how the business go, I just backed them ’cause I knew he was incredible.”