How Nelly Furtado got hip with Timbaland's hop

[KiwiCoromandel]

Celebrities, paparazzi, a flaming speaker and bags filled with money - just another day in the studio for the Canadian pop star, Andrew Murfett writes.

Paris Hilton was in the house. Downstairs, Ricky Martin was being stalked by Latino paparazzi. Briefcases stuffed with cash were arriving for hip-hop production maestro Timbaland.

Meanwhile, Nelly Furtado, the self-assured Canadian pop star with Portuguese roots was quietly putting together one of the year's biggest pop albums, Loose.

It was just another day at Miami's Hit Factory Studio.

"A movie should be made about Hit Factory," says Furtado, still clearly enthralled months later. "Sure, there was Ricky and Paris, but when people started arriving with their briefcases of cash for Timbaland, it started to feel very strange. You feel like you're on the pulse of hip-hop culture."

Following 2003's underrated Folklore, Furtado's newly released third album Loose is one of the pop surprises of the year.

Built around hypnotic, party-friendly beats from producer Timbaland, Loose is an intoxicating pop treat.

The response worldwide has been rather extraordinary. The album debuted at No. 1 in the US and through most of Europe and she has two monster hits on her hands in Promiscuous, the album's hedonistic calling card, and Maneater.

Inspired by the Hall & Oates 1980s classic of the same name, Maneater was the first track on which Furtado collaborated with Timbaland. She recalls their first session as smoking. Literally.

"Jamming on that track the first day, it was such an intense energy," she says. "We smelt smoke and looked at the speaker, and a flame shot out of it.

"It was completely bizarre, it actually scared us so much we put the song away for two weeks and didn't work on it cause it freaked us out so much. But it was a good sign."

Although born in Victoria in the Canadian province of British Columbia, Furtado's parents hail from Sao Miguel Island in the Azores, a Portuguese rural island community in the Atlantic Ocean. The 27-year-old singer has been visiting the area since she was nine.

"My parents came from a fairly poor village," she says. "I was very much exposed to rural Portuguese life, which was a good experience for a child."

As a high school student Furtado began to experiment with vocals and hip-hop and, after some local collaborations, was signed to DreamWorks Records in 1999.

Outside Canada, her 2001 debut album Whoa, Nelly! was a slow-burning success. In most countries it took up to 10 months for the breakthrough single I'm Like A Bird to reach the top 10.

Eventually, Furtado spent two years promoting and touring Whoa, Nelly! pushing it past 2 million sales.

"It was strange, because even though it was staggered around the world, it was still a whirlwind," she says. "My first photoshoot was Vanity Fair, my first TV show was Saturday Night Live, my first opening slot was for U2, and I won a Grammy.

"When it was all done, it was like 'what do I do now?' because so many of my dreams had come true."

In the midst of the commotion, Furtado fell for a DJ, Jasper "Lil' Jaz" Gahunia, to whom she became pregnant in December 2002. Eager to start work on a follow-up record, she began recording what was to become Folklore five months into her pregnancy.

"I just had that sinking feeling where I hadn't made an album in a couple of years," she says. "I was a small-town girl, and I had to maybe come to terms with my working class immigrant roots and remember who I was.

"Writing Folklore helped me work past some of my issues and explore those themes. I'm a selfish artist like that: my music is therapy."

Folklore's commercial failure (it sold a quarter of the copies of Whoa, Nelly!) clearly stung. It wasn't until her separation from Gahunia after the birth of her now two-year-old daughter Nevis, that Furtado was motivated to head into the studio again. Enter Timbaland. "We'd met five years before," she says. "He was on the same creative wavelength as me. He helped teach me to let go and stop thinking so much."

Furtado's precocious swagger, mostly absent on Folklore, is all over Loose. As is the city of Miami. Furtado, who is proficient in English and Portuguese, also learnt Spanish as a teenager and felt at home in the South Floridian Latino atmosphere.

Next month Furtado arrives in Australia again for a promotional tour. Daughter Nevis will accompany her. "Touring with Nevis is difficult but also great," she says.

"We're like gypsies, we tour the world with loads of luggage, strollers, toys, it's like a big circus.

"I've come to this great place in life where I'm a mother, and I feel comfortable in my womanhood," she says. "I've really learnt how to have fun and take life less seriously."

# Loose is out now through Universal Music.