"What it's like working with Petey Pablo?" Timbaland asks rhetorically. "So amazing. He's the best. You don't get a person that you don't gotta coach. I gotta coach him a little bit, but he's like your second Jordan. He comes in the studio and makes your song better.

"Petey is the truth," he continued. "His talent is way beyond what he can imagine. I wish he was my artist, but he's signed to Jive."

Timbaland first heard Pablo's raging, soulful flow on Black Rob's "Whoa!" remix and agreed to work with him after the two were introduced by Missy Elliott — that was Petey acting as one of Missy's hypemen during her performance at the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards. Missy's stamp of approval wasn't enough, though. Pablo, who features Timbaland on Diary of a Sinner's next single, "I," had to further impress the producer with his rhymes.

"I've been a Beat Club member ever since I proved myself on 'Raise Up,' " Pablo said of his association with Timbo's musical clique. "I don't think the track to 'Raise Up' is a typical Timbaland track. If you just heard the track, you wouldn't have thought Timbaland did that track. It don't have no crazy sounds on it. He's not talking on it. You don't have that 'Yeah, yeah' on that.

"It's like [teaching] a younger person," he continues. "You ain't gonna give him a big task to fulfill, but you're gonna give him something to prove himself worthy."

'The 'Hood Really Ain't Changed'

Petey Pablo's life reads like one of those "Choose Your Own Adventure" books. It could have played out several different ways. After serving six years in prison for a drug charge, Petey, who honed his skills in jail, returned home to his North Carolina neighborhood only to find himself surrounded by the same street enticements.

"The 'hood really ain't changed," he says. "The people that was there was different. The little shorties was big shorties. The older heads was giving me love, but the younger n---as was looking at me like, 'Who this n---a?' That was the true test to see if this was my life. After being away for all them years, from everything that was cool to me and familiar to me, immediately — not allowing myself to get caught up in the same entrapments — I left."

After jetting to New York, he was taken under the wing of Erick Sermon and later, Busta Rhymes. Although "things didn't work out" and neither MC officially put him down with their squads, Busta's former road manager Fab decided to guide Pablo's career. Further down the line, he formed a friendship with Black Rob (Petey, Rob, and G. Dep are part of a clique of MCs called the Alumni), and while the two were out on the town, a Jive Records exec heard Petey freestyling in a bathroom and decided to sign him.