Loose (Nelly Furtado Album) - Production

Production

Furtado began work on Loose by holding with emcee Jellystone what she referred to as a "hip-hop workshop", in which they would "write rhymes, dissect them, and try different flows over beats." The first producers she worked with were Track & Field—who co-produced her first two albums, Whoa, Nelly! (2000) and Folklore (2003)—and by May 2005, she had collaborated with Swollen Members and K'naan. She worked with Nellee Hooper in London on reggae-oriented material and with Lester Mendez in Los Angeles on acoustic songs. One of the tracks Mendez helped to create is "Te Busqué", which is co-written by and features Juanes, who collaborated with Furtado on his 2002 song "Fotografía". During her time in Los Angeles, she worked with Rick Nowels, who co-wrote and produced "In God's Hands" and "Somebody to Love". In Miami, Florida, Furtado collaborated with Pharrell (who introduced her to reggaeton and who gave her a "shout-out" in his 2005 single "Can I Have It Like That") and Scott Storch (with whom she recorded a "straight-up rap song") before entering the studio with Timbaland. He and his protégé at the time, Danja, co-produced eight of the tracks, with another produced solely by Danja. For some of the beats on the songs, Timbaland finished work on ones already present in the studio that were half-developed or just "nucleuses"; the rest were completely reworked. Furtado recorded around forty tracks for Loose, deciding which she would include based on the sonics of the album—she called Timbaland "a sonic extraterrestrial" who came up with a sequence of songs that flowed, and said that the one she had devised was supposedly unsatisfactory. She recorded an unreleased collaboration with Justin Timberlake, "Crowd Control", which she described as "kind of sexy" and "a cute, clubby, upbeat, fun track". Other songs considered for inclusion on the album include "Chill Boy", "Friend of Mine", "Go", "Hands in the Air", "Pretty Boy", "Vice" and "Weak". Furtado said in her diary on her official website that she recorded a remix of "Maneater" with rapper Lil Wayne; it was only released as part of a compilation album, Timbaland's Remix & Soundtrack Collection, she also used the instrumental of the song during many television performances of "Maneater". A version of "All Good Things (Come to an End)" featuring vocals by Coldplay lead singer Chris Martin, who co-wrote the song, was not released after a request from Martin's label, EMI. The song was released on the album, but only Furtado's vocals are featured. Furtado explained that "Loose was 90 percent written with a beat first, and then I’d write my melodies and songs to the beat."