Timbaland chops up Gil Scott-Heron on Rhythm Roulette — and fans are calling it “the worst episode ever”Revered producer Timbaland has appeared on the latest episode of Rhythm Roulette, but his efforts have not impressed some fans.
For the uninitiated, Mass Appeal’s Rhythm Roulette challenge sees producers make a beat by sampling three random records, which they’ve chosen from a local record store while blindfolded. Previous renowned guests include 9th Wonder, Kenny Beats, Mac Miller, A-Trak, and more. Timbaland’s selection blindsided him from the off, admitting he was unfamiliar with the three records he’d chosen.

READ MORE: “When Auto-Tune first came out, it was a tool. That’s what Suno is – the best tool of the future”: Timbaland says he spends 10 hours a day using Suno AI

However, he did say he knew of Gil Scott-Heron’s The Revolution Will Not Be Televised “from an artist perspective”. The other picks were Future Islands The Far Field and the Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band.
Despite his respected and legendary status, fans of the web series weren’t keen on what Timbaland cooked up. Some even suggested it was the “worst episode” of Rhythm Roulette to date.
“This was like having a Michelin star chef serve you a frozen pizza,”one person says in the YouTube comments.
“This was basically an 8 min Timbaland/BeatClub commercial …and he bombed with the easiest sample,” wrote another.

Meanwhile, over on Reddit, one user writes: “This shit was ASS. He didn’t even LISTEN to the other records and just went with the easy choice but didn’t even pick anything, just chopped the first thing he heard.”
Content creator and producer Weaver Beats reacted to the beat and video, saying “I wouldn’t say it’s trash but it’s not amazing…It’s a decent beat but it was just like super low-effort.”
“I feel like a late 90s era [Timbaland] on Rhythm Roulette would’ve went out of the way to find some obscure parts of records, even if he was lucky to get some often-sampled ones, to chop compared to this,” a third person theorises. “I also hate how generic the drum pattern sounds compared to his signature bounce.”
Others, however, are just happy that the beloved Mass Appeal series is back. “Finally, been waiting so long for this series to return! Please do one a week and stay consistent with it again!!!!” wrote one user on YouTube. Another said “I been waiting for RR to return! LET’S GOOO!”.
Timbaland was recently appointed as Strategic Advisor to AI music generation platform, Suno. Speaking about the platform, he said: “I just love innovation. I love things that can take what I’ve been doing for 30 years of my life and make it better…I loved Ableton [Live] when it came out, but [Suno] is the new everything… I’m like a kid. It’s like I’m 19 years old. It’s like falling back in love with the purity of creativity.”
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