Fox’s Empire has seen another shake up going into its third season. Timbaland, who was in charge of writing and producing the music for the first two seasons will not be returning.
Billboard reports that Timbaland will be replaced by producer Rodney Jerkins and songwriter Esther Dean.
Shawn Holiday, senior VP of A&R for Columbia Records, which releases Empire’s music, tells Billboard:
“We were happy to work with Timbaland during the first two seasons. But we wanted to take a different approach for season 3. We dealt a lot with family drama in the first season through songs like ‘Good Enough’ when Lucious Lyon threw his son Jamal in the trash can. That was a very emotional music moment. So we’re going for the same success with upcoming songs like ‘Mama,’ about Cookie being the backbone of the family, and a duet with Mariah Carey and Jussie Smollett.”
Jerkins is known for producing hits like Michael Jackson’s “Rock My World” and Brandy and Monica’s “The Boy Is Mine.” Dean is known for penning smashes ranging from Rihanna’s “Rude Boy” to Nicki Minaj’s “Super Bass.”
This isn’t the first big change at Empire. Earlier this month would-be co-star Kid Cudi said that he was backing out of the show over “creative differences” and was replaced with Romeo Miller.
Empire is looking to bounce back from a highly-criticized second season. Where the debut season was lauded by critics and loved by fans, the second year seemed to suffer from a sophomore slump.
“We started out with 24 million viewers,” says Holiday to Billboard. “That’s like Michael Jordan scoring 80 points in the first half. There’s no way he’s going to score another 80 the second half. We knew some mistakes would be made. But you’re going to see the actors and characters grow more mature and seasoned as music artists. And we feel that we have the chance this season to break an artist from a television show. We haven’t seen that since the early American Idol days.”
Photo: WENN.com
