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Rapper and producer Timbaland is making new strides in the world of music in association with the Artificial Intelligence (AI) entertainment startup he has co-founded, named Stage Zero. According to a Rolling Stone report dated June 5, 2025, the rapper has introduced "TaTa"—an AI-generated artist designed at Stage Zero.
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EntertainmentNow reports that TaTa is set to pioneer a new genre that Timbaland calls artificial pop or "A-pop" and will be dropping its debut single soon. In his announcement about TaTa, Timbaland explained via an official statement:
"I’m not just producing tracks anymore. I’m producing systems, stories, and stars from scratch. [TaTa] is not an avatar. She is not a character. TaTa is a living, learning, autonomous music artist built with AI. TaTa is the start of something bigger. She’s the first artist of a new generation. A-Pop is the next cultural evolution, and TaTa is its first icon."
Stage Zero is a company co-founded by director Rocky Mudaliar and entrepreneur Zayd Portillo, alongside Timbaland.
Timbaland designed an exhibit exploring the possibilities of AI with Nachum at Mercer Labs
This isn't the first time that Timbaland, born Timothy Zachery Mosley, has championed AI and its potential in the entertainment industry. Earlier in 2025, the Virginia native joined hands with Roy Nachum, founder of the Mercer Labs Museum in New York, to create an exhibit titled Maestros and The Machines.
The exhibit, consisting of multiple installations, is open to the public from April 25, 2025 through October 7, 2025. One installation invited attendees to draw child-like sketches of dinosaurs using crayons. Those creations are then placed on a digital scanner, which brings them alive as 360-degree projections.
Speaking about the creation with Billboard on April 28, Timbaland said:
"Imperfection is perfection."
The exhibit, which spans three floors, relies heavily on the re-imagination of classical works of legendary artists, including Mozart, Hokusai, and Da Vinci. It blends them with 4D soundscapes and other AI kaleidoscopic technology tools to push their mortal boundaries.
Mosley's role in the exhibit's creation was to handle its sound design, for which he created a collection of classic music, operatic voices, and beats. Elsewhere, Timbaland told the same media outlet that AI wasn't some fresh invention, saying:
"It kills me when people say, ‘Ah that’s A.I.!’ People are so mindf**ked. You been using A.I. since digital came out. That was a form of A.I., but you just had to do it by hand. Now, I’m doing it by thought. It’s all about who you are individually. I can give everybody the same tools, but nobody’s gonna sound like me. The iPhone camera is so good, but not everybody can shoot a music video on iPhone."
Mosley also talked about his collaboration with Nachum, claiming that he had been a longtime fan of the founder, adding:
"Technology allowed people to collaborate. I’m in music, he’s in art. He knows how to make music come to life, but we couldn’t do that before because one would be faster than the other."
Besides Maestros and The Machines, the other highlights at Mercer Labs' April exhibition included two mechanical hands playing a large cello, a zen garden manned by a robot, and a fully-functional ball pit.
