Back in our July 2008 issue, VIBE covered three of the biggest songwriters in the game, all of whom were making the transition from behind-the-scenes to the front of the stage. Sean Garrett, Ryan Leslie, and Keri Hilson - who's debut album comes out today. Check out what we had to say about Timbaland's protegé and when you're done, be sure to read our review of Keri Hilson's In A Perfect World.
******************************************************************************************
There aren’t too many ASCAP nominated songwriters who moonlight as video vixens, but judging by her scintillating cameo in the video for Usher’s recent No. 1 hit, “Love In This Club,” Keri Hilson takes her beauty and brains unselfconsciously in stride. Lounging in a Midtown New York City office on a crisp spring afternoon, Keri, 25, basks in the glow of imminent stardom. And it’s no wonder she radiates confidence. Not only did she write Timbaland’s “The Way I Are,” a song that made the whole world sing in 2007, but she got to sing it, too. The glamorous multi-tasker knows all too well that being up-front is what matters most. “For [‘The Way I Are’], it was that people knew I sang it,” she says, donning a comely tweed jacket and fetching news 2007, but she got to sing it, too, donning a comely tweed jacket and fetching newsboy cap that make her look like a sexy riding instructor. “Once people know your name, the rest opens up. It was less important to me that people read the credits on that record.”
Hilson got her start performing in local talent shows and school plays. With support from her musically inclined parents, Keri was studying piano, vocal arrangements and stacking harmonies before she was a teenager. “All those technical things a 12-year-old should not know,” she says, laughing. That same year the Decatur, Ga., native wrote her first song: “I’ll Never Let Go.” Six years later, she sold one—a tune called “Jump,” for Japanese R&B singer Michko—and then Hilson felt legit. “I was a singer first, I guess,” she says, “but it went hand in hand because as long as I was performing, I was writing.”
She’s written some big ones, too, with her five-person songwriting collective The Clutch, comprised of Candice Nelson, Ezekiel Lewis, Patrick “J. $ue” Smith, and Balewa Muhammad. They hooked up Chris Brown and Omarion with hits (2005’s “Young Love” and 2006’s “Ice Box,” respectively) and penned Ciara’s epic 2007 song, “Like A Boy.” Keri also contributed three songs to Britney Spears’ 2007 comeback, Blackout (Jive), including first single “Gimme More,” which was produced by Timbaland associate—and now player in his own right—Nate “Danjahandz” Hills.
“Britney Spears was seven months pregnant,” Keri recalls, “standing up in the booth, with her second child. She was way more dedicated than I’d be.” Brit-Brit’s belly wasn’t the only thing showing. It was obvious all was not well with the then-Mrs. Kevin Federline.
“You could sense it,” Keri says. “They gave [Federline] a code name. And when he called, her energy would drop, and we’d have to work on building her back up…but she was actually very sweet through it all.”
All in the game for a songwriter; in Keri’s case, one who provides lyrics, melody, and vocal arrangements but who leaves the heavy lifting to actual producers like Timbaland. Keri met Tim “Timbaland” Mosley in 2004 —they were introduced by fellow Atlanta producer Polow Da Don— and since then, they’ve been creatively joined at the hip. “The chemistry was definitely there in the studio,” she says. “It’s one thing to be talented and to have a great voice, or to be a great producer—but to mesh the [three], to see what it really does, is another thing.”
Keri’s own vocal talents were fi nally put to good use on “The Way I Are,” her most recent collaboration with Timbo, who along with Rodney Jerkins produced her playful forthcoming debut, In A Perfect World... (Zone 4/Mosley Music/Interscope). For Hilson, having the skills and drive to write her own material has made her a better singer. “You feel it more because they’re my words. It’s my metaphor, and my melody, it’s all the things dear to me, coming out,” she says. “You can tell. I don’t knock singers who don’t write because I built my career off that. But, there is a difference in the emotion that comes through. You’ll be able to tell that.”
If Keri’s words caught the public’s ear, it’s her looks that catch their eyes. Smoky-eyed and lithe, Hilson is the kind of beauty that makes you mad. She’s so funny and smart, too. But there’s a downside to such glamour, especially in a genre with so few women who work as songwriters-for-hire. She’s heard all the sniping about how she may or may not have landed where she has: She’s some exec’s puppet, she’s someone’s girlfriend, or worse yet, she slept her way to the top.
“I’ve gotten all of that, but you know what?” Keri says with a smile, picking at the sprouts on a chicken sandwich, “that’s why I made rules early in my career: I’m never in the studio unless I’m working. We call [those girls] studio rats. You’ll never see me be a studio rat in anyone else’s session, unless I just finished, or I’m about to start. I want the respect that the men get.”
Photographed by Miko Lim in NYC, April 7, 2008; Styled by Young-Ah Kim
home
